


Dante Discovers The Secrets to Ari's Universe

by fandomlimb



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2018-11-19 13:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 56,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11314710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomlimb/pseuds/fandomlimb
Summary: A retelling of Ari and Dante from Dante's POV. Not sure at this point how strictly I'll stick to original dialogue and precise content of the book's chapters...it's a mystery to me we shall soon discover. :)





	1. Hi-yo Silver

One summer morning, I woke up to the sound of trumpets.

Trumpets _William Tell-_ ing, crackling gunshots, and a deep-voiced ‘Hi-yo Silver!’ blasted me out of the dream I’d just been having about a pool filled with liquid sunsets. My eyes shot open and my heart was stampeding wild and crazy (gunshots for a wake-up sound will do that to you, even if they are old timey and obviously sound effects) but I liked it.

“Hi-yo Silver yourself,” I muttered to my clock radio and to the radio DJ who chose _The Lone Ranger_ theme song to be part of his set. But I couldn’t help smiling, too. I liked waking up like that, all high alert and at-the-ready. I liked that my heart felt just as loud as the hooves of a horse that I imagined was carrying a masked vigilante across a desert valley ridged with white-tipped mountains.

“Hi-yo Silver! Hi-yo Silver!” I said again. This time with a little more oomph, like I really meant it, using my enclosed hand like a megaphone.

Then a bird that had hunkered down on my windowsill flexed its feathered neck and looked straight at me with its beady black eyes! I guess it didn’t like all my _Hi-yo_ -ing this early in the morning.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. But the bird flew off in what I’m pretty sure was a huff.

“Well it’s gonna be a real scorcher out there today ladies and germs! Hope you all stay cool in the pool so you don’t rot in the hot! Time to wake up El Paso! It’s Monday, June 15th, 1987! 1987! And a big ‘Happy Birthday’ goes out to Waylon Jennings, who’s 50 years old today!”

The DJ’s voice was a little too corny but it made me laugh thinking about this overly enthusiastic guy sitting alone in his radio booth absolutely going bananas talking to himself about the dangerously high heat index and a random dude’s birthday. I bet he really loved his job, sounding as hyped as he did. Or maybe he just liked random facts a lot. Like he’d totally cream you in Trivial Pursuit every time.

He then went on to tell a sad story about how this Waylon Jennings guy had narrowly avoided death because he gave up his seat on the airplane that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

The story made me sad and a little awed, too. It made me think about how we never know how the smallest decision we make will change our lives. Or end them. Like the Butterfly Effect in chaos theory. How do we know when the smallest choice will have the biggest of consequences? And do we even have a choice? Is it all decided by God or fate? Or is it all just random random random?

I was trying to think about these deep things but then the DJ went straight into “La Bamba”. “La Bamba”? Really? To me this didn’t seem like a smooth segway from his tragic story. If I was the DJ I’d have picked something different. Something with a little more gravitas. But maybe the DJ was trying to tell us, ‘ _Hey, Life’s a party and you only get one shot at it so get off of the wall and start dancing’._

I don’t know about dancing, but I was definitely in the mood to swim. It was going to be too hot a day not to, after all.


	2. Coffee Zombies

I walked into the kitchen. Mom and Dad were at the table, still in their bathrobes, drinking coffee and reading their newspapers. It made my heart happy to see them there so relaxed, bathed in the morning light pouring in through the windows. I gave them both a kiss on the cheek. My dad hadn't shaved yet and his cheek was still scruffy but my mom's skin was smooth and smelled like coconut lotion.

“Good morning. Is today the day you’re going to start letting me drink coffee?” I teased.

“Dante, honey,” my mom clucked. “You know we only want you to learn from our mistakes. Your father and I both turn into cranky zombies without our morning caffeine and we’re trying to keep you a real human boy as long as we possibly can.”

“Maybe I want to be a coffee-freak zombie? How will I know if you never let me try it for myself?”

“Ask me again when you’re old enough to drive our car.”

“Or vote,” my dad piped in. Real wise alecks, the pair of them.

The truth is I really only wanted to start drinking coffee in theory, on principal, because fifteen years old is definitely old enough to decide what one couldn’t or could put in one’s own body (alcohol and hard street drugs probably not included…my parents raised me right after all). But my pestering was mostly just for show because I hated how coffee tasted. Same with beer. Blech. Why do adults go crazy for the stuff? One of life’s mysteries.

“What are your plans for the day?” my mom asked once I’d settled down at the table with my cereal and orange juice.

“Sheesh it’s the first week of summer break! Why do I need plans? Can’t living my life be enough of a plan?”

“Well if your day is so freewheeling and fancy-free why don’t you start off by mowing the lawn before it gets too hot?” my dad said and winked at me from the top of his coffee cup.

“Well there goes my plan to write The Next Great Mexican-American novel this summer. I’ll just pass out from heat exhaustion and inhaling lawn mower fumes instead.”

“You can use the time you’re mowing to ruminate on your budding literary and artistic achievements. It’s called multi-tasking.”

“Ok, I’ll mow but after that I’m hitting the pool.”

“Seems fair to me.”

I sorted through their papers to find the comics pages. _Calvin and Hobbes_ was my favorite, hands down, then _The Far Side_ , then _Garfield_. But I read the whole page, even the ones that weren’t actually funny. I read the _Cathy_ comic, which I usually don’t get, but this time I started cracking up.

“What’s so funny?” my mom asked.

“Well, according to this, if I start drinking coffee I’ll turn from a zombie to a maniac with sun beams projecting out of my skull.”

“Yikes. Let me see that. Well, actually, that's pretty accurate. But take our word for it, honey, you’re sunny enough already.”


	3. Hey Mendoza

I was sweating buckets before I even started up the lawn mower. Maintaining a perfectly lush green lawn in El Paso requires a level of passion and zeal usually reserved for members of cults or obscure off-brand religious sects. Only hardcore mowing fanatics need apply. Many of our neighbors looked around at the native plant life and thought, _Gee, this all looks pretty much like a desert, why not let it do its desert thing? Welcome gravel! Welcome rocks! Welcome cacti!_ But not my dad. When our lawn got patchy or brown he took it like a slap in the face to all his careful research on optimal types of soil, seeding, watering and irrigation, fertilization, and of course, the dreaded weekly mowing. He couldn’t have just hired a lawn care service, that would have been too easy, not when he had an able-bodied teenage son in need of some good old fashioned work ethic and communing with nature (his words, not mine).

But honestly I can’t actually complain because there is nothing I like more in this world than the feel of grass between my bare toes. Especially after a summer rain when the ground is a little squishy and the dirt squelches between your toes and the smell of the wet grass makes the inside of your nose all itchy (in a good way). Seasonal allergies be damned, rainstorms and cut grass are the perfect smells of summer. It would just be nice if I wasn’t the one who had to do the cutting all the time!

It was quiet that morning on our block. Most animals and people were probably taking refuge in dark cool places, away from the overbearing heat. And who could blame them? I imagined the sun melting the asphalt road in front of our house into an oozing river of tar and my parents and I hauling our metal canoe out of the garage and rowing through the sticky black river down to the community pool. I imagined how good that first dive into the turquoise water would be. I guess you could say I really wanted to go swimming. And maybe I was getting a little delirious from the heat. But after a little while, I got used to it. The heat, I mean.

After I was done mowing I got a tall glass of water and sat in the shade of our front tree. I leaned against the tree trunk and shut my eyes. I dug my toes into the grass and listened to the leaves rustling, the whirring of insect wings, and the occasional bark of a neighborhood dog. I missed our old dog, Ringo. He died when I was thirteen and I hadn’t had the heart to get a new one. It just wouldn’t be the same.

I was snapped out of my thoughts by the mean and cracking voice of a pre-pubescent teenage boy. “Hey Mendoza! Hanging out with all your friends?”

My back was facing the street and the tree trunk blocked my body so I swiveled around to see what the commotion was all about.

I saw a boy, my age, with shaggy dark hair that fell in a swoop over his eyes. He was wearing a fraying black tshirt and swim trunks with a towel slung over his shoulder. Trailing him was a bunch of guys on bikes. They were younger than him but I could tell they were on their way to being hard. The type of kids who might end up needing my mom’s help in a few years.

The shaggy-haired boy waved at them with a friendly smile and then gracefully rotated his hand around so he was flipping them all off. Still smiling.

The bike boys began circling around him like a pack of pimply vultures.

“You want to do that again?” the boy with the cracking voice sneered.

The shaggy-haired boy scratched his chin, like he was really taking his time to think through the offer, then he chin-flicked and flipped them the bird again in another smooth gesture.

The bike boy stopped right in front of the shaggy-haired boy, shooting him the dirtiest glare he could muster. “Don’t screw with me, Mendoza.”

At this point, I was getting nervous. This Mendoza boy was older and taller than the other guys, but small-framed like me. And he was outnumbered six to one. I stood up from my spot just in case I would need to step in if things started looking bad for him. He had such a beautiful face, I’d hate to see what it would look like if those other guys started wailing on it with their fists.

He didn’t back down or seem fazed at all by the other boy’s attempted stare-down. He just flipped him the bird again and pointed it at the kid’s face like it was a gun.

My breath caught in my throat as the two boys played a game of chicken with their eyes. But I guess I had no reason to be nervous because the younger boy broke first and spit on the ground before riding off with his pack of lackeys, all of them yelling obscenities and flipping him off as they biked away.

The shaggy-haired boy’s face was hard to read as he watched them fade into the distance. He clenched and unclenched his fist twice, kicked a few pebbles and then kept walking. I wanted to run after him but stayed behind the tree until he was all the way down the block and heading through the gate to the pool. My heart didn’t stop racing the whole time I watched him go.


	4. The Pool

After he was gone I went inside to change into my swim trunks. I was still sweaty and probably more than a little stinky, too, so I thought maybe I should take a shower at home first and then another at the pool just in case? But that was probably going overboard, right? How smelly could one fifteen-year-old possibly be after a half hour of lawn mowing? I grabbed my towel, flip-flops, sun block and goggles. I quickly gave my parents both a good-bye kiss and headed down the block to the pool.

He wasn’t in the locker room when I got there, which was sort of a relief. Striking up a conversation in a locker room is always a little awkward. I’ve kind of gotten used to being around naked guys from being on the Cathedral swim team and all, but still, the question always remains, where are you supposed to look? Eyes, of course. Anywhere else could be inviting trouble. But people who make 100% eye contact can also be creepy. They are usually really into God or trying to sell you something. Or both.

Not that I wasn’t kind of curious what the shaggy-haired boy might look like in the context of a locker room. But, again, creepy. So, yeah, it was a relief he was already done showering.

I soaped up and rinsed off and tried to think of what I would say to him when I saw him. I knew mentioning the altercation with the bike boys would be a bad idea, especially since I had technically been spying on him. I wasn’t going to win any points by admitting right off the bat I had been kind of a creeper. Best to pretend I never saw it. Start with a totally blank slate.

I left the locker room and started walking around the perimeter of the pool, trying to look as casual as possible though my eyes were scanning and darting everywhere for him. A girl I sort of knew whose brother goes to Cathedral smiled and waved to me and I waved back. For a second I thought she might invite me to hang out with her, but she and another friend of hers were deep in gossip and sunbathing mode so I kept walking past her. Then I spotted him, way at the far end of the pool, where usually just the young kids and their parents hang out because it’s shallow.

He was sitting at the edge of the pool near the lifeguard’s stand with his legs dangling in the water. He was alone. He hadn’t taken his black t-shirt off, even though I knew he must be burning up in it. I walked past him to put my towel down on an empty beach chair. His back was to me, so I couldn’t really see his face. His shoulders were a little slumped and he shook his head a few times to himself.

Then he twisted his torso around so he could brace his hands on the pool’s ledge and he carefully lowered himself into the water.

I knew right away that he didn’t know how to swim properly.

I watched him as I put my sun block on. My beach chair was far enough away that I’m sure he didn’t notice me staring. But I noticed immediately that he hung onto the pool’s ledge to kick his legs. And that he did a dead man’s float but didn’t try to propel himself anywhere with his arms or legs. Not even a doggy paddle.

When he floated on his back, his tshirt billowed up around his chest. I wondered why he wanted to keep himself covered. His skin was darker than mine, so it didn’t seem likely he would be especially sensitive to sunburns. But maybe skin cancer ran in his family? Or maybe he had scars or bruises he wanted to hide. Thinking about that made me sad.

He must have really been in his own world while he floated along with his eyes closed because he barely registered that screaming brats in floaties were splashing all around him. His expression was somewhere between a frown and a pout and he squeezed his eyes shut to either keep out the sun, chlorine or both. I wished I had brought my extra pair of goggles for him. I finished lotioning up and gathered up the nerve to approach him. I stood by the edge of the pool a few feet away from where he was floating.

“I can teach you how to swim,” I said.

No response.

At first I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. Maybe his ears were under the surface and water-clogged? I had said it pretty loudly though. But after a second he spit some water out of his mouth and stood up in the water, shaking out his hair. He eyed me suspiciously in this squinty way. I got the feeling he was the type of guy who didn’t let his guard down super easy around strangers. I sat down on the edge and put my legs in the water. The cool water felt really good on my hot feet and I swished them through the water to feel the streaming sensation between my toes. I screwed up my courage and tried again.

“I can teach you how to swim, if you want.”

Second time’s the charm?

He waded a little closer to me and gripped onto the pool’s ledge. He used his other hand to shield his eyes from the sun and he looked up at me.

Had I just made a terrible mistake?

“You talk funny,” he said.

Huh. Wasn’t expecting that. I went with it anyway. “Allergies,” I said.

“What are you allergic to?”

“The air.”

He started laughing and I thought maybe this conversation wasn’t going to crash and burn after all.

“My name’s Dante,” I said.

Then he started laughing harder. Great. So he was one of those guys who thought my name was odd and different and laugh-worthy. The disappointment must have started creeping all over my face because he said sorry and tried to reign in his laughter.

“It’s okay,” I said, even though it sort of wasn’t. “People laugh at my name.”

“No, no,” he said. “See, it’s just that my name is Aristotle.”

Remember what I said earlier about choices and fate and if things happen for a reason? I had a thought right then that maybe the reason I wanted to go to the pool so badly when I woke up this morning was because today was the day I was supposed to meet him. A kind of silly and romantic notion, I know, and probably one that our philosopher namesakes would probably not have agreed with. But it felt really important, then, in that moment, to know that this strange boy and I were connected. A matching set.

“Aristotle,” he repeated in a way that made me sure that people gave him a lot of flak for his name, too. I liked his voice. It was kind of low and soft and monotone and sarcastic but still managed to convey what I could already tell was his sharp sense of humor.

Then we were both laughing like fools. Me, out of relief. Him, I’m not sure why.

“My father’s an English professor,” I said. That should be all the explanation needed for why I wound up being named after a way old dead guy best known for talking about hell.

“At least you have an excuse. My father’s a mailman. Aristotle is the English version of my grandfather’s name. _Aristotiles._ ” He said it with a heavy formal accent, the Mexican way. I really liked how his name rolled off his tongue like that. “And my first name is Angel. _Angel._ ” Again with the formal accent. The way his voice sounded did something a little funny and strange to my insides, like they were just zapped with a resuscitator.

“Your real name is Angel Aristotle?”

“Yeah, that’s my real name.”

Now I couldn’t help cracking up. We both did. One of the lifeguards threw us a nasty look but screw him (sorry Mom!). If he wanted to sit and bake on his stand all day and be a huge grump that was his prerogative.

“I used to tell people my name was Dan,” I confessed once our laughter had finally died down. “I mean, you know, I just dropped two letters. But I stopped doing that. It wasn’t honest. And anyway, I always got found out. And then I felt like a liar and an idiot. I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn’t like feeling like that.”

“Everyone calls me Ari,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Ari.”

If he were an adult I would have probably shook his hand. If he were a relative or cousin I would have kissed his cheek. But he was neither of those things. I just wished I could mark the importance of this moment somehow with something other than just words. But I knew already he probably wasn’t the hugging type, so I kept the urge to touch him to myself.

“Okay,” he said. “Teach me how to swim.” The way he said it, like he was deigning to allow me to give him a swim lesson, cracked me up yet again. I could tell already I’d be doing a lot of smiling around him.


	5. The Basics of Buoyancy

The first thing I had to teach him was how to breathe underwater. It’s funny to think about that, teaching a person how to breathe. It’s one of those things that you wouldn’t think there’s a wrong way and a right way to do—like laughing or hiccupping or hair growing or heart beating—because most of the time it just _is_. But if you don’t know how to breathe properly in the water at best you’ll never be able to master anything else and at worst you could drown. So proper technique is paramount.

At first Ari wanted to use his thumb and forefinger to pinch and plug his nose whenever his head went underwater. But I knew he’d have to use his arms eventually to learn the different strokes so I told him he needed to think like a fish.

“The first rule in the basics of buoyancy: embrace the bubbles.”

“Embrace the bubbles? Try saying that ten times fast… _basicsofbuyoancyembracethebubbes_ … _basicsofbuyoancyembracethebubbe_ s…”

“Well, maybe not _embrace_ per se, but don’t be afraid of them.”

“You think I’m afraid of bubbles?”

“Yeah until you show me otherwise.”

He kind of scoffed at me but smiled, too, and he did exactly what I told him to do. So I knew he’d be a good pupil. We started out with him practicing with his face half-submerged so he could blow bubbles out of his nose in a long steady stream. Then we worked on quick breathing with a fast inhale above the surface and then exhaling bubbles below. Pretty soon he got the hang of it. Though he still scrunched up his nose underwater in this scowl-y way that made me smile.

Then I taught him the different types of kicks: the flutter kick, whip kick and egg beater kick. The name of the last one cracked him up.

“What if I want to do the migas or frittata kick instead?”

“You can call it whatever name you want as long as you’re doing it properly.”

“Ok, whatever you say, Mr. Miyagi.”

I liked being his teacher, despite his sarcastic jokes. In fact, his jokes were probably the main reason _why_ I liked it. That and helping him feel safe and confident in the water.

We moved on to how to tread water. That’s also sort of funny to think about…teaching someone how to stay where they are.

I said, “To tread water you have to do the eggbeater kick and use your hands to keep your balance by sculling.”

“By _what_?”

“Sculling.”

“Ok I’ve never heard that word in my life. Are you a walking dictionary?”

“It means you gotta keep your arms flat on the surface and move one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. Imagine they're butter knives spreading on a piece of toast.”

“Again with the breakfast food obsession. What’s next…the Egg McMuffinkick?”

“Actually the peanut butter and _jellyfish_  kick is my personal favorite.”

“Ok you should _dolphinitely_ scale back on the fish puns if you’re ever going to teach me anything.”

We both laughed so much Ari inhaled water into his nose and ended up sort of choking. So that was the end of our first lesson.

We hung out at the pool together all the rest of the morning and discovered things about each other. What we had in common and what we didn’t. What comics and books and movies we thought ruled and what we thought was terrible. We agreed on a lot but disagreed, too.

“Let me guess…you’ve never read _Aquaman_? This explains why we needed this lesson today,” I joked.

“Har-har. I have so read _Aquaman_ but they don’t exactly teach you how to do the butter kick or whatever you called it.”

“Flutter kick not butter kick.”

“But anyway in a DC Marvel face-off Hydro-Man would kick Aquaman’s butt easy.”

“Who the heck is Hydro-Man?”

“A supervillain Spider-Man fights. He can transform into water, hence the highly creative name they gave him.”

“I’d take Archie and Veronica to Spider-Man any day.”

“Ok I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

We stayed at the pool until it was time to head home for lunch. Since I lived so close to the pool we walked home together.

“Wow it’s so cool you live so close to the pool and the park,” he said.

“Yeah, I like it.”

We looked at each other and I kind of wished we could keep talking forever and I wanted to invite him for lunch but I chickened out.

“You ready for swimming lesson number two tomorrow? I think you might be able to move on to the crawl stroke. But it’s easier with goggles. I’ll bring my extra pair. And my kick board.”

“I’ll practice the fluffernutter kick tonight in my room so I’ll have it perfected by tomorrow.”

“You're gonna be an A+ student.”


	6. Pac-Man and Tattoos

I got to the pool early the next day to shower and do some laps before Ari was supposed to get there. I’d had butterflies in my stomach when I woke up that morning so I did laps to calm myself down. I liked matching the rhythm of my breathing to my arm strokes and feeling the burning sensation in my muscles when I tested my body’s limits. I swam and swam and let my mind empty out of pestering thoughts. Sort of what I imagine Buddhist meditation must be like. I’ve never really meditated, just prayed a little bit in church but I think that’s different. I’d just read _Siddhartha_ and the idea of Nirvana intrigued me. I thought about what it would be like to sit under a tree in the lotus position for years and years and everyone I love dying by the time I was done attaining true inner peace. Would I be sad that they’d all passed on or would my enlightenment allow me to recognize that life and death are an endless circle and that sadness and happiness are just constructs of the mind? I still think I’d be sad, even if that meant I wouldn’t ever be truly enlightened.

I guess I was a little nervous when I woke up that Ari wouldn’t show up though he told me he would.

But he did show up. In a different t-shirt this time. The one yesterday was a concert t-shirt for Santana (I've never really listened to him). Today’s t-shirt had Pac-Man on it. I was really happy to see him again, though it had been only about 20 hours since we’d last said good-bye.

“I like your shirt,” I said.

“Thanks, I got it for Christmas.”

“I love Pac-Man. I can relate to him on an existential level.”

He laughed at that. “How can you relate to Pac-Man? He has no personality. His one and only trait is that he’s hungry.”

“Exactly. I’m a teenage boy! I’m basically ravenous all the time.”

“Ravenous? Who uses words like that?”

“Me, obviously.”

“Ok, I’m always hungry, too. But 'relating to Pac-Man on an existential level'? What are you, like, trapped in an endless maze blindly searching for purpose but all you can do is eat dots?”

“No, I just hate ghosts. Especially ones named Inky, Blinky or Pinky.”

He laughed a lot at that, which made me feel just as victorious as beating the boss level of a video game. I said, "I feel bad for Clyde. I bet he feels left out and really wishes his name was Twinkie."

"Or Kinky," he said and we both cracked up.

“Have you ever been to that big arcade place on Constitution Ave?” I asked.

“You mean Ricky-O’s Fun Center with the batting cages? I had my birthday there when I was a kid. I loved jumping in the plastic ball pit.”

“Yeah, that’s the place. I’ve driven by a bunch but I’ve never been. We should go sometime.”

“Sure, yeah. It’s kind of far, though. We’d have to get our parents to drive us.”

“We could take the bus?”

“Yeah, we could do that.”

I wanted to suggest that we go there today after our lesson but I kept it cool. “Ok, ready for your next lesson? First things first, I want to see how your kicking technique is with this kick board. Then we can move on to the dolphin stroke.”

“Do I get to wear flippers?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, one step at a time.”

We continued on with the lesson and at one point I told Ari that I thought his t-shirt was slowing him down.

“Isn't it heavy? Do you want to take it off?" I asked.

“I have this huge purple birthmark on my back.”

“So what?”

“I hate it. When I’m older I’m going to cover it up with a tattoo I think.”

“A tattoo? Of what, ‘I love Mom’?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Maybe I can design something for you.”

“Can you draw?”

“Yes, I love to draw.”

“Could you do fancy letters of someone’s name?”

“I think so.”

“Ok, we’ll see. Ask me again when I’m eighteen.”

"I can see it already in elegant handwriting: RIP Inky, Pinky, Blinky, Twinkie and Kinky."

Ari laughed and shook his head at me. He took his shirt off, though, and he agreed that it was easier without it. I probably wouldn’t have noticed his birthmark if he hadn’t pointed it out. But I think that’s pretty common with things people want to keep hidden about themselves.


	7. Icarus

After our fourth swimming lesson, I invited Ari over to my house for lunch. My parents were curious to meet him (and they claimed I hadn’t stopped talking about him since Monday). My mom was still at work but I knew my dad would be home. He’s an English professor and was spending the summer researching and writing his latest book, which to me looked a lot like hanging around his office all day reading and drinking tea. Not a bad gig, right?

“My dad’s in his office. Let’s say hi then we can make some lunch. I could make peanut butter and jelly, tomato soup or heat up some frozen pizza bites. We could eat those with leftover black beans and rice?”

“Pizza bites with rice and beans? Well there’s a first time for everything, I guess.”

We went into my dad’s office. I could tell Ari was nervous. He didn’t move too far past the doorway and he kept his eyes locked on his shoes. 

I sat down on the arm of Dad’s big brown leather chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek. His chin was scratchy (again). “You didn’t shave this morning, Dad.”

“It’s summer.”

“That means you don’t have to work.”

“That means I have to finish writing my book.”

“Writing a book isn’t work.”

Dad laughed his big belly laugh (my favorite of all his laughs). “You have a lot to learn about work.”

“It’s summer, Dad. I don’t want to hear about work.”

“You never want to hear about work.”

I didn’t like where this conversation was headed so I tried a diversionary tactic. I pinched at his chin scruff and asked, “Are you going to grow a beard?” 

“No, it’s too hot. And besides, your mother won’t kiss me if I go more than a day without shaving.”

“Wow, she’s strict.” I never minded the ticklish way my dad’s chin felt when it was stubbly, but I guess Mom could lay down the law where her own lips were concerned.

“Yup.”

“And what would you do without her kisses?”

I knew I was getting close to the amount of teasing he’d tolerate. He smiled and turned his attention to Ari, who was still hovering in the doorway. “How do you put up with this guy? You must be Ari.”

“Yes, sir,” Ari said. Sir! Who knew Ari had such good manners?

My dad got up and shook Ari’s hand. Ari’s eyes got all wide. “I’m Sam,” my dad said. “Sam Quintana.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Quintana.” Wow Ari was really gunning for polite friend of the year award!

“You can call me Sam,” Dad said.

“I can’t,” Ari said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him.

Dad nodded and said, “That’s sweet. And respectful.” Dad turned his eyes to me and said in his trying-to-be-authoritarian voice, “The young man has some respect. Maybe you can learn something from him, Dante.”

“You mean you want me to call you Mr. Quintana?” I sassed. Dad was trying hard to keep a straight face in front of Ari but I was onto him. Dad gave me a look before turning back to Ari. “How’s the swimming?”

“Dante’s a good teacher,” Ari said. I was proud he said that and I liked how my name sounded coming from his lips. He snuck a quick look at me through the curtain of dark hair that half-covered his eyes, almost like we were sharing a secret. He had this way of shaking his head forward every now and then so his hair stayed in a swoop over his eyes. I hadn’t noticed this cute tic of his in the pool when his hair was wet before. I had the sudden urge to tussle up his hair but knew that would not go over well.

“Dante’s good at a lot of things. But he’s not very good at cleaning his room. Cleaning a room is too closely related to the word _work_.”

I knew where Dad was headed with this and I didn’t like it. “Is that a hint?”

“You’re quick, Dante. You must get that from your mother.”

“Don’t be a wiseass, Dad.” If Mom were here she would have scolded me for using a curse word, but I was taking a chance that Dad wouldn’t mind it. Turns out I was wrong.

“What was that word you just used?”

“Does that word offend you?”

“It’s not the word. Maybe it’s the attitude.”

I rolled my eyes. Ok, maybe I was showing off in front of Ari a little bit. Bravado and all that. I sat down to take off my sneakers.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Dad said. “There’s a pig sty up there that has your name on it.”

Drat. I’d rolled the dice on the sass-o-meter and lost big time. I was hoping I’d be able to spend all day doing nothing with Ari but it looked like Dad was choosing today of all days to play dictator.

I kicked off my sneakers and wiggled my toes. Ari looked at me a little funny and reached down to take off his shoes, too.

“Oh, you can leave your shoes on if you like,” I said. “I just like having mine off. ‘Free the feet’ is basically my life’s motto.”

“Ok, good. Because my socks both have holes in the toes,” Ari dead-panned and my dad and I both laughed.

“Ari and I need to eat lunch, Dad. You can’t expect me to starve our guest just because you are hell bent on enforcing dictatorial rule about the state of my room.”

“Lunch first. Then clean.”

“Ok, ok.”

For lunch Ari decided pizza bites and black beans was an abomination so he decided to make his "special secret recipe" of fish-stick tacos instead. I was his sous chef and responsible for the chopping. He was a real stickler for chopping, let me tell you. He showed me the best way to hold a knife and the difference between mincing and julienning. I may have known all the technique when it came to swimming but he sure had me beat in knife skills. When it came time for me to chop an onion he got a big grin on his face.

“What?” I asked. “Are you going to laugh when the tears start streaming down my face?”

“Ok, I read this thing about onions in a magazine once but have never got to try it.”

“Try what?”

“Apparently if you wear goggles it will stop you from crying.”

So we put our goggles on and it actually worked! We liked wearing them so much we spent the rest of the time preparing the meal pretending like we were underwater. I don’t normally like cooking but I didn’t mind it with Ari.

After we’d eaten and cleaned up we went up to my room.

My dad was right (darn him), it truly was a mess.

I had a burst of nervous jitters in my tummy now that Ari was on the threshold of my room. I did a quick scan to make sure there wasn’t anything super embarrassing like dirty underwear in plain sight. Nothing too bad, just the normal hodgepodge. I hadn’t felt nervous at all when we were downstairs, but being alone in my room felt different somehow.

I started picking up the dirty clothes and putting them in my hamper. I didn’t want Ari to smell anything foul and think I was a heathen. He was doing the same hover-in-the-doorway thing he’d done in my dad’s office so I decided to put on some music, hoping to set a more relaxing mood.

I chose _Abbey Road,_ basically the most perfect record ever made.

“I can’t believe you have an actual record player,” he said.

“It was my mom’s. She was going to throw it away. Can you believe that? Vinyl. Real vinyl. None of this cassette crap.”

“What’s wrong with cassettes?”

“I don’t trust them.”

He laughed at that. But I sort of knew he would before I said it. “Records scratch easily,” he said.

“Not if you take care of them.”

He gave my room a thorough once over. “I can see that you really like to take care of things.”

He had me there. I laughed and handed him a book of poems that was sitting on my nightstand. William Carlos Williams. I had been reading it last night before I went to bed and had a dream I was stringing up a mountainous stack of white sheets, shirts and dresses on a clothesline in the middle of a prairie field while a big storm was brewing overhead. The white sheets flapped in the wind like a whip. I liked the dream though it was unsettling, too. Good poetry will do that to you.

There was a particular poem called "Icarus _"_ that when I read it last night it reminded me of Ari. I wanted to tell him that, but I thought he might think that was a little strange, telling him I was thinking about him while I was reading poetry. So I handed him the book, instead. Maybe he’d read the same poem and think of me and we’d both be none the wiser. “Here, you can read this while I clean my room.”

“Maybe I should just, you know, leave you—” he said and flicked his hair forward. I could still see his eyes looking all around my room. “It’s a little scary in here.”

Scary, ouch. I mean, my room was a little _chaotic_ maybe, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it scary. Ari and my dad seemed to be on the same page about the optimal cleanliness of rooms, I guess.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t leave.” (I really didn’t want him to leave). “I hate cleaning my room.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have so many things.”

I looked around. To someone else’s eyes I could see how it could leave the impression that a tornado had just breezed through: clothes, shoes, books, records, notepads, polaroids, sheet music, old homework assignments and tests, and all the pictures I’d torn out of magazines for my inspiration board were scattered everywhere and covered nearly every available surface. Yeah, I guess there was a lot of stuff, but who doesn’t have a lot of stuff?

“It’s just stuff. If you stay, it won’t be so bad.”

“Ok, should I help?”

“No. It’s my job.” I knew my mom would really tear into me if she found out I’d roped my new friend into cleaning my room for me. I’d never hear the end of it. And knowing me, I wouldn’t be able to _not_ tell her. That’s the funny part.

We chatted a bit about our moms and dads. Ari hadn’t told me much about his parents and I was curious what they were like, how Ari got along with them. It seemed like Ari had magically entered my life like Athena emerging fully grown out of Zeus’ skull and I was having trouble picturing him as a baby or with his family. I told him that I understood my dad—heck, I’d had his number since I was a little kid. My mom, not so much. She’s a psychiatrist and helps teenagers for her job and so she knows how to keep her cards close. My dad and I are more alike. Both big open books. Ari, he was more like my mom, I realized: inscrutable in certain ways, clear as day in others.

“Read that book while I clean.”

He opened it up and thumbed through a few pages. He looked up at me and I could read it on his face that poetry was not his thing.

“Poetry,” I said. “It won’t kill you.”

“What if it does? Boy Dies of Boredom While Reading Poetry.”

I tried to keep a straight face—after all poetry is an important art form and has a bad rap!—but that worked just as well as it always works when Ari is looking at me with the corner of his lips upturned in a half-smirk and a sparkling gleam in his dark brown eyes. I shook my head in mock offense and started attacking the monster task of getting my room in order.

My comfy reading chair had become a catch-all receptacle for all the random things I hadn’t bothered putting away over the last few weeks so I told him to clear it off so he could sit there and read.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking up one of my sketch pads.

I froze momentarily.

“A sketch pad.”

“Can I see?”

I shook my head no. “I don’t like to show it to anyone.”

It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about my drawing skills or that I thought Ari wouldn’t appreciate some of the drawings I’d done—in fact I bet he'd especially dig the comic book characters I liked to do sometimes for fun. But there were a few drawings in there of a boy sitting on the edge of a pool that I didn’t want him to see.

I picked up the pad and put it away on my desk and changed the subject back to the book of poetry. “Really, it won’t kill you.”

Ari sighed dramatically but then settled in to reading with little complaint after that. While I cleaned up I snuck quick peaks at him to see how he was enjoying it. His eyebrows were knitted together the whole time he read and he had a habit of biting his lower lip when he was really concentrating (I had noticed this at the pool as well when I was giving him detailed instructions) but he kept at it until he’d read the whole book.

Late afternoon in my room is my favorite time of day. I have westward facing windows and when the golden light spills in you can see little dust particles floating in the air in an almost sparkly and magical way sometimes. The light hit the white pages of Ari's book and it reflected back up onto his face, making him glow almost.

After _Abbey Road_ was done I switched on _Pink Moon._ I’d found the record at a junk shop and liked the surreal picture on the cover so I bought it even though I’d never heard of Nick Drake before. It quickly became one of my favorite records.

Believe it or not, I do have a system once I get going organizing my room. Books especially. My shelf is alphabetical by author’s last name (the library way) and my ‘to-read’ pile on my desk goes in ascending order of excitement about reading. Once all the dirty clothes are in my hamper it’s pretty easy to sort the rest of my clothes out, too. I like folding everything in neat stacks by type of clothes (undershirts, tshirts, button down shirts, shorts, pants) and by color. I find it soothing to see them all stacked up in rainbow order in my drawer. My painting and drawing area also needed some attention. I organized my drawing pencils, charcoals, pens and paints in my plastic storage bins. I soaped up all my paintbrushes that had gotten stiff. I organized my records, alphabetical by artist.

Every now and then Ari would make a “hmm” noise or a soft grunt. I was dying to ask him what he thought about the poems he was reading but I kept focused on my room. The sooner I finished, the more time we’d have to talk and hang out.

I finished up my room and looked around, satisfied with my work. I took the book of poems from Ari. I found one I particularly liked called "Death _"_ (uplifting title, right?), which is about a dead dog. Whenever I read this poem I thought of Ringo, my old dog. There’s a picture of us on my bulletin board. He was old when he died. He had cancer. Reading the poem aloud felt almost like giving him a eulogy again (I had insisted my parents and I all give speeches when we buried him). It still hurt thinking about him, but I liked how reading the poem aloud made my memories of him feel alive inside me. Like I was marking an important moment by remembering him aloud, even if the remembering was only for myself. I didn’t tell Ari about Ringo just then because I was afraid I might tear up. I knew I’d tell him one day, though.

 _He’s dead_  
_the dog won’t have to_  
_sleep on the potatoes_  
_anymore to keep them from freezing_

 _he’s dead_  
_the old bastard—_

I smiled at that last word, thinking of Ringo and also because here, alone in my room with Ari, I had free reign to say curse words like 'bastard' without the cluck of my mom’s tongue or my dad’s raised eyebrow. We had our own rules up here, ones that we could make up on our own, together.

While I was reading aloud, Ari had shut his eyes. Not because he was sleeping or bored, but because I think he was really trying to listen to the words. His face was peaceful then. The crease between his eyebrows smoothed over. I felt bold enough to continue reading more poems to him. I wanted to keep that peaceful look on his face for as long as I could.

When I got to _"_ Icarus _"_ , my heart started beating fast, I don’t know why. It’s not like he would know that when I read the beautiful words I imagined Ari falling from the sky like a shooting star and landing in a sparkling, clear blue sea with barely a splash.

 _According to Brueghel_  
_when Icarus fell_  
_it was spring_

 _a farmer was ploughing_  
_his field_  
_the whole pageantry_

 _of the year was_  
_awake tingling_  
_near_

 _the edge of the sea_  
_concerned_  
_with itself_

 _sweating in the sun_  
_that melted_  
_the wings’ wax_

 _unsignificantly_  
_off the coast_  
_there was_

 _a splash quite unnoticed_  
_this was_  
_Icarus drowning_

My voice quivered a little when I read the last line. If Ari asked about it I could just claim it was allergies.


	8. Sketch of Ari Reading (done from memory)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Image link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/u32yusfnop3eoxb/ari2.jpg?dl=0)


	9. Friends

I should get something out of the way: I didn’t have a lot of friends in El Paso.

We moved from Berkeley to El Paso when I was starting 6th grade. By 6th grade everyone who has already known each other since Kindergarten aren’t usually looking to add a rookie to their best friends roster. And there’s the whole thing about me not looking that Mexican. I was scrawnier then and always had my nose stuck in a book (I guess that hasn’t changed much, actually). My teachers all liked me and I liked them, so I felt never felt antisocial. I didn’t get teased that much, just the normal amount most bookwormy outsiders learn to put up with. 

I do remember this one time in 6th grade, I was sitting on a school toilet, trying to go number two. Out of nowhere, the face of a kid I’d never seen before appeared above me. He was standing on the toilet seat in the next stall over, peering down at me. He could see my thing, so I covered it up with my hands. My heart started beating really fast and I wanted to get up but then he’d see even more. So I stayed put and looked up at him. I looked him straight in the eyes. He asked me my name of all things.

“Dante,” I said.

“What type of name is that?”

“It’s my name.”

“It sounds gay. What class are you in?”

“I’m in Mr. Medina’s excelled class for Wings students. It’s just for the smart kids. You probably never heard of it.”

“You saying I ain't smart.”

“What’s the square root of 576?”

“Screw you.”

He spit down on me and I covered my hands over my head like the teachers taught us to do for emergency drills. The loogie landed on the brown tiled floor with a splat. I remember how shiny it looked. The kid hopped off the toilet and kicked the stall walls a few times for good measure on his way out.

I didn’t like myself for making the bully kid feel stupid or trying to make myself out to be better than him. But I didn’t have a ton of options, did I? I never told my parents what happened that day and always went to the bathroom on the other side of the building after that whenever I could.

Then I went to a different middle school for 7th and 8th grade. 7th grade is not kind to most people, so we don’t really need to talk about it that much. But I found a group of guys there who liked playing D+D on Friday nights. But most of those guys ended up going to DaVinci and then I started at Cathedral in 9th grade so I could be on the swim team.

My best friend from before El Paso is named Carmen. We still write each other letters but not as much as we used to. I have a shoebox full of her old letters. She has a boyfriend now and I see her sometimes when we visit my grandparents and cousins in LA for the holidays.

Ringo was my other best friend.

I’ve heard my mom and dad refer to me sometimes as a loner. I don’t like that word. It’s too much like lonely. I’ve never been lonely. Not having many friends has never really bothered me, actually. I have Mom and Dad. I have my books, my sketchbooks, my comics, my music, my daytime dreams, my nighttime dreams, my ideas and inspiration. I like taking long walks by myself and thinking about everything. I like swimming by myself and thinking about nothing.

Until I met Ari I didn’t think I was missing out on anything by being by myself most of the time. I like being by myself. But I think I like being with Ari more.


	10. Bus ride

Ari and I found out we had one thing in common that most teenagers our age would not be too happy about: neither of us were allowed to watch television during the day, parents’ orders. This rule never really bothered me because I liked reading more than watching TV anyway, but I did find it a bit arbitrary. Will your brain rot more if you watch TV during the daylight hours or the night hours? I didn’t think it made a difference, rot is rot, no matter the color of the sky or position of the sun. I think my dad started this rule because of his parents. They have a little restaurant in LA and they keep a television on in there all day, mostly sports and telenovelas (what my abuela calls “her stories”). Growing up my dad would have to do his homework in the restaurant after school and I think he appreciates quiet now because of it more than most people. Both my parents know when there’s a time for talk and noise and a time for quiet and that’s one of the things I appreciate most about them.

My mom’s favorite saying regarding the no TV rule was something along the lines of _The real world is much more interesting than television, anyway. You’re young, the world is your oyster! The whole wide world is out there waiting for you…it’s your job to go out and find adventure, not sit inside all day._

So one day after our 5th or 6th swimming lesson, I wasn’t in the mood to go home (or, I should say, I wasn’t in the mood to say goodbye to Ari yet for the day). So I suggested we go out and discover some of the world around us, together, like our parents were always going on about. In this case, the "whole wide world" was going to be Ricky-O’s Fun Center and Arcade. So after our lesson we went to my house for lunch and I told my dad what are plans were. He offered to drive us to the arcade, but that would have defeated the purpose, wouldn’t it? He reluctantly agreed, but made sure I had a bus map and schedule and enough quarters for the bus fare and to make a payphone call if we accidentally ended up in Juarez. I promised to be home by dinner.

So we got on the bus. I liked the clanking noise the coins made when I slid them into the fare slot. The clickety-clacking official sound signaling _Adventure begins now!_

We sat in the very back row of the bus. This felt unspeakably cool. I liked the vibration and hum of the seats. And every time the bus jostled or hit a speed bump, our knees would touch briefly like a flash of lightening. I didn’t expect this to make me feel inside the way it did. I mean, I’d touched Ari in the pool to help him with the proper positioning of his arms and legs for learning the different swimming strokes. But I had a purpose and reason to touch him then. The jolt I felt every time our legs touched after the bus hit a pothole was entirely separate from the actual force or velocity of the bus’s motion.

Once when the bus made a super wide turn I leaned hard into Ari on purpose, pressing him against the window, and said, “Use the centrifugal force, Luke!”

Ari laughed and said, “The _what_ force?”

“Centrifugal force. Newton’s second law of motion?”

(I was still still pressing into him).

“Newton’s second law of you are such a weirdo, you mean?”

We laughed and he kind of joke-pressed his shoulder against mine in the other direction. I joke-elbowed him back.

I knew then I’d want to ride the bus with him as much as I possibly could.

I saw a woman come onto the bus and sit down. She took her wedding ring off and slid it into her purse. Or maybe I imagined it. Either way, I leaned close to Ari again and whispered in his ear, “That lady two seats in front of us. I think she’s having an affair.”

“How do you know?” he whispered back. His lips that close to my ear and his breath on my skin made the hairs on my neck stand up and goosebumps erupt all down my arms and legs.

“She took off her wedding band as she got on the bus.”

He nodded at me and smiled. He liked this game. I smiled back.

We rode around like that for the next hour, knees bumping (mostly accidentally, but sometimes on purpose), heads bent together, conspiratorially conceiving of all the wild exploits, shenanigans, tragedies, heartbreaks, traumas, foibles and fables of our fellow passengers until it was time for us to get off for the fun center.

The fun center, it was all right, I guess. Not as fun as the bus ride, though.


	11. Las dos Fridas

I wanted to meet Ari’s parents. But I soon realized I’d probably have to invite myself over since Ari had yet to suggest we go over to his house after one of our swimming lessons. It made sense, since my house was so much closer to the pool. It took him about 15 minutes to walk from his house and mine was half a block away. But still, I was curious to meet his family and see where he lived.

I wanted to see the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes every morning. What was his room like? What books did he have? What photos and posters were on the walls? What color was his toothbrush? Did his room smell like him? Did he look more like his mom or his dad? I knew his mom was a teacher and his dad was a mailman and that he had two older sisters, but that’s about all I knew about his family. And I wanted to know everything there was to know about Aristotle Mendoza and how he became the boy I couldn’t wait to see every day at the pool.

So one day after a swimming lesson, I told him I wanted to come over to his house and asked if that was ok. He didn’t look at me like I was a lunatic but he wasn’t exactly jumping up and down at the idea either.

“When?” he asked.

“I dunno. Later today?”

“Why?”

“I want to see where you come from.”

“I come from El Paso.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve met my dad and seen my house and my room, so it’s only a fair trade.”

He smiled at that and I knew I’d won him over. “Ok,” he said. “But my dad doesn’t get off work 'til 4:00pm. So if you want to meet him you should come over around then.”

“Ok. Deal.”

We walked to my house and said good-bye. It was nice to say good-bye knowing I’d see him again in just a few hours.

I told my dad I was going over to Ari’s house later that day to meet his parents and maybe stay for dinner. He suggested I bring them a gift. That’s the type of thing I never would have thought of and I’m glad my dad did because I wanted Ari’s parents to like me.

“What sort of gift?” I asked. “Like flowers? Or chocolates?”

“Flowers would be nice for his mother, and chocolate is universally accepted as one of the best presents a person can offer, but let’s see if there’s something a bit more personal you could bring them.”

“Personal?”

“Something that comes a little more from the heart.”

“Like what?”

“Something aligned with their interests, perhaps.”

“Well, all I really know is that his mom teaches and his dad’s a mailman.”

“And they’re Mexican, yes?”

“Yeah, well, the same way that you and Mom and I are Mexican, I guess.”

“I mean, Ari’s grandparents were born in Mexico?”

“Yeah.”

“How about you bring them the book  _Mexican Painters_? Do they like art?”

“I’m not sure. Ari’s never said. The only art we’ve really talked about yet is comic book art.”

“Bring that book over to them. I think they’ll like it.”

“Ok, thanks, Dad.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and went into the living room to take the book from its normal spot on our coffee table. I paged through it. I liked how thick and creamy the paper was. I liked how it smelled, too, if that makes any sense. Different types of books have different smells.

I looked for a long time at painting by Frida Kahlo called _Las dos Fridas_. It's a double self-portrait and a pretty badass painting. There are two of her sitting side by side with their hands clasped in the middle; behind them a stormy sky swirls ominously. The Frida on the right’s heart is outside of her body and connected by a long red vein to the Frida on the left. You can see straight through to her bones and muscles inside the empty cavity where her heart should be. She’s holding a pair of scissors in her lap and her white skirt is blood-stained. I read about how the painting was made the same year she divorced Diego Rivera, also a painter. The Frida on the right is holding a tiny painting of him.

If I were going to make a painting called _The Two Dante's,_ I wondered what I would paint myself doing, holding or wearing. My heart has never been broken like Frida’s was when she painted this. But I think I understood the sadness even though I’d luckily never felt anything quite like it. I thought about why I used to want people to call me Dan and not Dante. I thought about not quite fitting in here at school or with my cousins in LA and Mexico. I thought about the Dante I kept a secret and the Dante I was around everyone else, including my parents and Ari.

I picked up the book. It was heavy. I liked that. It made the gift feel significant and I wanted it to be.

I went back to my dad’s office. “Should I wrap it? The book, I mean?”

My dad smiled. “I think you can bring it as is.”

“Ok, cool.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Don’t be. They’ll love you.”

“Thanks, Dad."

I took a shower and even borrowed a little bit of my dad’s cologne. I spent a few hours reading and drawing (I sketched out some ideas for _The Two Dante's_ but didn’t quite like any of them) and then it was time to go over to Ari’s. I walked over instead of skateboarding because I had the art book with me and I wanted to keep looking at it during the walk over. I wondered what it was like to paint a huge mural like one of Diego Rivera’s; how long did it take, did he have helpers or did he paint the whole thing himself? Maybe my parents would take Ari and I to Mexico City sometime to see them in real life? I wondered if my mom and dad would let me paint a mural on the wall of my room someday. I liked the idea of an underwater scene with a colorful coral reef and sunlight filtering in through turquoise ripples and waves.

Ari’s house was ranch style, with stones and cacti in the yard instead of grass. He was lucky, no lawn mowing duty like me.

I knocked on the door and Ari let me in.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey. We have a strict ‘No shirt, No shoes, No service’ policy here, so keep those suckers on,” he said and pointed to my shoes. I knew he was joking. He loved teasing me about my thing about not liking to keep my shoes on. I didn’t mind the teasing.

“Ok, I’ll keep them on just this once. Because I like you.”

His parents were both in the kitchen and he led me to them. His mom was cooking and his dad was reading the paper.

“I’m Dante Quintana,” I announced.

“He taught me how to swim,” Ari said. I thought maybe he was a little embarrassed about this, but I wasn’t sure why. “You said don’t drown—so I found someone to help me keep my promise.”

I realized this was possibly the first they’d heard of me. I tried to not let this new knowledge hurt my feelings.

I shook his dad’s hand and gave him the art book. “I brought you a gift.”

Ari’s dad wiped his hands on a napkin before opening the book up, even though they weren’t dirty to begin with. His mom peered over his shoulder at the book as he leafed through it. Both were smiling, which made me feel good. I liked their kitchen. It smelled like onions and garlic simmering in butter, which made my mouth water. I looked at Ari’s parents’ faces, trying to discern which features Ari had inherited from each of them. He had his mother’s full lips and well defined cheekbones but other than that I thought he took after his dad. They both hunched their shoulders the same way.

Ari’s dad looked up from the book and said, “Dante, this is really very generous, but I don’t think I can accept it.”

His parents looked at each other. My mind started racing. Maybe it was too fancy a gift? Would chocolates have been better after all? I could tell he liked the book, though, and I wanted him to keep it. “It’s about Mexican art. So you _have_ to take it. My parents didn’t want me to come over here empty-handed. So you have to take it.” I wasn’t sure if guilt-tripping them into accepting my gift was the best route but I had to try, didn’t I?

Ari’s mom took the book and looked it over. “It’s a beautiful book. Thank you, Dante.”

“You should thank my dad. It was his idea.”

Ari’s dad smiled and said, “Thank your father for me, will you, Dante?”

Ari touched my shoulder. He looked…disconcerted. For the second time in less than five minutes, I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. “Let’s go to my room.”

* * *

I thought Ari’s room would be crammed and over-run with clothes, books and comics like my room usually was. But it was entirely opposite of that. Sparse. Empty. Almost like what I imagined a prison cell would be like. But not sad or scary like a prison cell. Just blank like that.

“There’s nothing in your room,” I said.

“There’s a bed, a clock radio, a rocking chair, a bookcase, some books. That’s not nothing.”

“Nothing on the walls.”

“I took down my posters.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t like them.”

“You’re like a monk.”

(That seemed like a better way of describing his room than a prison cell).

“Yeah, Aristotle the monk.”

I pictured Ari in a long brown robe, sort of like Friar Tuck in _Robin Hood_. I guess I didn't know what modern day monks would wear. Monk fashion probably had no need to evolve since the 1300s.

“Don’t you have hobbies?”

“Sure. Staring at the blank walls.”

“Maybe you’ll be a priest.”

He sat down on his bed. “You have to believe in God to be a priest.”

“You don’t believe in God? Not even a little?”

“Maybe a little. But not a lot.”

This was new information to me. We hadn’t really had a chance to talk about God or spirituality yet. Coming here was making me realize that Ari was much more of an enigma than I had realized.

“So you’re an agnostic?”

“Sure. A Catholic agnostic.”

That was such a typically Ari thing to say that I started laughing out of pure relief.

“I didn’t say it to be funny,” he said with a kind of pout that made me smile even more.

“I know. But it _is_ funny.”

“Do you think it’s bad—to doubt?”

I sat down on the bed next to him. It creaked a little and sagged under our combined weight so that we both sort of slid a little toward the center. “No. I think it’s smart.”

“I don’t think I’m so smart. Not like you, Dante.”

I hated the look he got in his eye right then, his warm brown eyes clouded over by self-doubt and self-deprecation. Ari was good at hiding that side of him. I’d seen it the very first day I saw him fend off those bike kids, how easy it was for him to put up a tough front. Now, in his empty room, with just the sunlight slanting in, casting half of his face in light and the other in shadow, it was like I could see both sides of him clearly: _The Two Ari's_.

“You are smart, Ari. Very smart. And anyway, being smart isn’t everything. People just make fun of you. My dad says it’s alright if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Dante, you’re an intellectual. That’s who you are. Don’t be ashamed of that.’”

We looked at each other. He jerked his head forward in the way he always did and the fringe of his hair covered over his eyes. Not for the first time I wished I could run my hands through his hair and sweep his bangs off to the side for him.

“Ari, I’m trying not to be ashamed.”

We were both quiet. He picked a little fuzz off his blanket. It was an afghan, hand-knit. I wondered if someone in his family had knit it for him. I had a white afghan my abuela had made for me as a baby blanket. I kept it in my memory box with my favorite stuffed animals and other mementos my mom knew I'd want to have when I was a grown up.

“So, when do I get to see pictures of baby Ari?” I asked.

He snorted. “Dream on. Not gonna happen.”

“What? There are pictures of me all over my house. I show you mine, you show me yours. Fair is fair, right?”

“I burned all the baby albums before you got here.”

“Liar.”

“Ok, you’re right. I buried them instead. Here, let me just get out the treasure map.”


	12. New Telescope

We got our report cards back pretty soon after school let out for the summer and as a reward for my straight A’s my parents told me I could get a present (so long as it was educational). I knew exactly what I wanted: a new telescope. My dad special ordered it and everything. When Ari and I got back from swimming one day I saw a big brown box sitting on our front porch.

“Yes!” I brought the box inside and immediately started tearing the packaging tape off.

“Christmas in July?” Ari asked.

“Well, technically it’s still June. But kinda. It’s my new telescope! My old one is for kids. This one has much more advanced optics.”

“Only you would have a burning desire to own more than one telescope.”

“Want to come out stargazing in the desert with us? I’ll need to consult the _Astronomer’s Almanac_ and see exactly when the next New Moon is but I think it’s in a week or so.”

“’Consult the _Astronomer’s Almanac_ ’?” Ari shook his head at me and laughed. “Why do we need to go during the New Moon, anyway?”

“The glare from moonlight can wash out many deep-sky treasures.”

“I didn’t know how into Astronomy you are.”

“Yeah, it’s one of my life’s passions.”

Ari laughed even more at that.

“Let’s get this all set up. Then maybe we can practice targeting.”

We went up to my room. The first thing I did was take out the instruction manual and read the entire thing, front to back.

Ari looked at me and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever seen who actually reads the instructions all the way through first. Most people jump right in and take it one step at a time.”

“You have to respect the instruments and the process. I like to know what the final outcome should be.”

I took all the parts out of their plastic bags and laid them out side by side. Assembly wasn’t that complicated, really, but I wanted to be extra thorough. You basically just needed to mount the telescope tube, finderscope, and adjustment cables to the tripod. While we put it together I explained to Ari what all the different parts were for. He’d never been stargazing before!

“You’re in for a treat,” I said. “On a clear night, out in the desert, it’s like looking up and out into the pieces of your scattered soul.”

Ari looked at me all wide-eyed and then he laughed. “Who just says things like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just…nevermind.”

“Carl Sagan says we’re all made of star stuff. Haven’t you seen _Cosmos_ on PBS?”

Ari shook his head no.

“No way! Ok, we have to watch it. Immediately. I got the entire boxed set videocassette collection last Christmas! It’s one of my most valued possessions.”

“Boxed set? How long is this show?”

“Thirteen episodes!”

“Wow.”

“Maybe we can watch one episode every day leading up to our stargazing trip. But first, let’s go outside and practice focusing and targeting.”

We carefully brought the telescope outside. I aligned the finderscope. We looked mostly at treetops and birds. I made up a game where I would say one of my favorite space words and have Ari guess what he thought it meant.

“Faculae,” I said.

“Faculae…fac-u-lie...let’s see. That’s a fact about space that turns out to be a lie.”

“Use it in a sentence.”

“Ok…Excuse me, I was told that Mars was populated by little green men with big bug eyes! And now you’re telling me that it’s just friggin’ desert? What a damned faculae!”

I laughed so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. “Want to know what it really means? Bright patches that are visible on the Sun’s surface.”

“Mine’s better.”

“I agree. Ok…how about lunation?”

“Lunation…that’s gotta be an outer space nation run by lunatics. An alien loony bin on the moon.”

I laughed. “That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Aristotle. The dead philosopher one, not you. ‘There's no great genius without some touch of madness’. Do you think that’s true?”

“That all geniuses are a little crazy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, since I’m a certified genius I can only speak from my own experience. And I’m as sane as they come.” He made a googly-eyed face at me and I laughed again.

“But seriously,” I said. “I don’t know if he meant that creativity and insanity are always interconnected. But a lot of the world’s great thinkers had huge imaginations and must have seemed a little odd or eccentric to their peers. Out of place.”

“Because everyone else didn’t understand them, you mean?”

“Yeah, like, Beethoven, VanGogh, Edvard Munch, Isaac Newton, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Wolfe…they had serious mental problems but they used it in their art? But the idea that pain and hurt make you a better artist…I don’t know, it doesn’t sit right with me. Can’t a person be happy and creative at the same time?”

“Sure, just look at Bob Ross? That guy is high on life and paint fumes all the time.” We both laughed. “But consider yourself lucky, Dante. You’re one of the happiest people I know and that’s what makes you _you_. Don’t be worried that it means you won’t be able to do great things with your life. You’re the type of person that bad things just bounce right off of."

My chest got all tight when he said that. I wanted what he said to be true, but even I knew that no one is immune to all the bad things out there in the world, all the pain.

“Ok…new word. Caldera.”

“You never told me what lunation means.”

“Right. It’s the interval of a complete lunar cycle, between one New Moon and the next.”

“Mine was better. And caldera. Well, that’s a big pot. _Caldera._ ” He said it again, but this time with a Spanish accent.

I smiled at him. “Yes, you’re right, the word does come from _caldera,_ Mr. Certified Genius. But what does it mean in a space context?"

“Ok, well, let me use my powers of deduction here…something spacey that is like a big pot of boiling something or other. Like a space volcano?"

“Ding ding! Totally right. It’s a large volcanic crater, leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano. Like a cauldron. _Caldera.”_

“I thought you said you didn’t know any Spanish?”

“I know some Spanish. Just not that great.”

“I can give you street Spanish lessons in exchange for swimming and space lessons.”

“Street Spanish?”

“Yeah, you know, like, insults in case anyone ever tries to mess with you. If someone gets up in your face say _chingate_ or _chinga tu madre_.”

“I know what those mean. But if I said something like it would be like asking for a fight, right?”

“Well, I’d be there, so no. You wouldn’t have to fight.”


	13. A poem after stargazing in the desert

I thought looking at the stars would make me feel small  
and lost. Instead, I feel larger. Redwood tall. Waterfall tall.

My feet are planted in the rocky ground, but my roots  
run well-deep. I lift my arms and reach. A star shoots,

then another, a brief blaze, a silver whisper. The lie:  
these are not stars at all. But dust specks, tiny meteorites

speeding toward Earth, so much closer than we realize.  
Heat and speed make them shine. A simple trick of the eyes.

But tonight, I thought, let them be falling stars. Each one a gift.  
A good omen. A miracle. A reason to make a wish.

Through my telescope I searched for Saturn  
to show you her rocky rings. I understood their turning orbit,

their pull. Galileo knew, too: Saturn is never alone.  
Looking up with you, I’m not lost. I’ve come home.


	14. Lost Boys

About ten days after my new telescope arrived, on the night of the New Moon, my parents, Ari and I went out to the desert for stargazing. My dad has a spot he likes to take us: Hueco Tanks Park. It’s a ways outside of El Paso on 62, about a 45-minute drive. I don’t mind the drive, it’s part of what makes these expeditions special. There’s another park we like to go to that’s another hour beyond that, in the Guadalupe Mountains. Being up in the mountains just makes you feel closer to the stars somehow. We have to go far enough away enough from El Paso that the electric light from the city doesn’t pollute the pristine night sky.

Light pollution. It’s funny to think about that. When you usually think about light it’s synonymous with things that are good and pure: an angel’s halo; dawn breaking after wrestling with a ‘dark night of the soul’; a beacon shining between parting clouds as the word from an almighty deity is bestowed upon our biblical ancestors; a light bulb representing an astonishing breakthrough, a eureka moment; _the light at the end of the tunnel_ ; _I saw the light_ ; _This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine_ ; The Dark Side vs The Force (well, technically The Force is invisible, but I think the metaphor still holds up since it essentially boils down to a fight between darkness and light).

But tonight, light is the enemy, the contaminant.

Light pollution is ‘excessive and inappropriate artificial light’. What a harsh definition, right? I’d hate for someone to call me excessive and artificial. Our ancestors didn’t have to worry about things like Bortle Scale ratings, urban sky glow, light trespass, glare, clutter and having to drive hours away to remote locations to simply witness the wonders of the Milky Way. Our ancestors may not have had televisions or radios or cars or street lamps or illuminated parking lots or 24/7 grocery marts or big office buildings and factories and everything they could ever want right at their fingertips. But they had the stars. It’s the price we pay for industrialization, for trying to have too much of a good thing. There’s always a price.

So we drove out to the desert to find what our ancestors took for granted. All the way there, my dad played his collection of _Beatles_ cassette tapes and we sang along to all the songs. (I am willing to make an exception to my vinyl-only rule for car rides since it sure beats most of the schlock on the radio).

During _Abbey Road_ , when “Here Comes the Sun” came on, I thought again about light pollution. To George Harrison, the sun and the morning light is like a Godsend, a ray of pure goodness and relief. I thought about what other things we take for granted as being “good” that might only seem that way because of the context or because of what we’re taught and how we’ve been conditioned to think about them.

Good vs Evil, for example. Comic books make it seem so simple, so cut and dry. You root for the good guy and you cheer when the bad boss gets creamed. But in real life, real wars and battles, with real human lives on the line, how can it ever be that simple? World War II and Hitler, for example. Obviously Hitler was pure evil, no one can deny that. But what about soldiers killing people under orders? Or German citizens caught in the crossfire, just hoping that their families made it out alive and too scared to speak out or put their lives on the line to save anyone else? Are they also evil? Is a silent bystander to an atrocity complicit and automatically just as evil as the perpetrator? Some people would argue yes. It’s your moral duty to act and resist whenever you see injustice. I’m inclined to agree. But I can also see how hard that must be, how brave you have to be to take a stand against a force that seems so powerful and scary and dangerous. I think that bravery must be like a muscle, you have to practice making it stronger.

I thought about what other things we are taught to think are automatically “good or bad”?

Sane vs Crazy  
Strong vs Weak  
Healthy vs Sick  
Real vs Artificial  
Clean vs Dirty  
Smart vs Simple  
Rich vs Poor  
Skinny vs Fat  
Popular vs Outcast  
Light skin vs Dark skin  
Boys who are tough vs Boys who cry  
Girls who are pretty vs Girls who are plain  
Boys who want to kiss girls vs Boys who want to kiss boys

All of these things have nothing to do with whether or not someone is actually a good person or not. Whether they are nice, generous, helpful, loving, don’t kill or hurt anybody, are kind to animals, are welcoming to neighbors and strangers alike, don’t steal or lie or cheat. It made me angry that people get judged all the time just for being born the way they are born. For being assigned a label of “good or bad”, “worthy of love and praise vs worthy of hate and ridicule” for no other reason than what you look like, what clothes you wear, how you speak, who you love. It’s when you start listening to those outside voices and believing those things about yourself that you run into trouble. That you stop being able to love yourself.

Ari didn’t sing along with us to the _Beatles_ (though he had heard me play _Abbey Road_ enough by now to probably know most of the words). I don’t think he minded us singing though. He stuck his hand out the window and I watched the wind ripple through his hair and I watched him bounce his leg and tap his knee with his fingers along with the beat.

When we got to the park, Dad and I got the telescope ready while Ari and my mom stayed in the car. They were listening to the radio and chatting; the windows were open so I could still hear their conversation.

“Dante says you’re very smart,” my mom said.

“I’m not as smart as Dante.”

I wasn’t going to stand for that kind of talk. Not after everything I’d been mulling over in the car ride over. “I thought we talked about this, Ari,” I said so he knew I could hear them inside the car.

“What?” Mom asked.

“Nothing. It’s just that most smart people are perfect shits,” I said. 

“Dante!”

I was trying to prove a point!

“Yeah, Mom, I know, the language.”

“Why is it you like to cuss so much, Dante?”

“It’s fun,” I said. And it was even more fun cussing around Ari and my parents for some reason. I’m not sure why that was.

I could tell Mom was still shooting eye bullets at me even though it was dark out. Dad laughed, though. “It _is_ fun,” he said. “That kind of fun needs to happen when your mother isn’t around.”

Mom didn’t like that. “What kind of lesson are you teaching him, Sam?”

I guess the lesson would be: if a 15-year-old cusses in the desert, but his mom isn’t around to hear it, did he ever cuss at all?

I was about to make a snappy comeback, but right then my dad finished focusing the telescope and I got my first clear look up into the sky. It took my breath away. “Wow, Dad! Look at that! Look!”

We’d found Saturn.

It was incredible.

Everyone took turns looking through the telescope. I was so excited I started talking a mile a minute to Ari about everything I knew about Saturn’s rings. It seemed really important that he understood what this moment meant to me. How when I looked through the telescope at something so ancient and distant as the infinite celestial objects light-years above us, they didn’t feel far away at all. Because it felt like all the atoms inside me were singing and calling out the same song taught to them long ago when they were initially forged from the same star matter we were seeing with our very own eyes. A welcome home song as familiar as a goodnight lullaby my abuela used to sing to my mom who used to sing it to me, too.

I tried to explain all this to Ari, but I don’t know if I did a good job or not since he didn’t say much. He just kept looking up.

I leaned in close to his ear as his eye was peering through the finderscope and whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”

“What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?”

“I’ll know what to do with them,” I said, even though I didn’t quite believe it. But I wanted to. “Maybe change the world.”

* * *

It was late by the time we got home, but neither of us was tired just yet. I was still stoked from what we’d seen above us and the roaring open feeling in my chest when I looked at the stars and looked at Ari looking at the stars.

We decided to sleep outside, under the open sky. We got camping mats and sleeping bags out of the garage and laid them out on the grass. It was a pretty warm night so we took our shirts off and lay on top of the sleeping bags. We could hear my parents talking in the kitchen through an open window. My mom was speaking in Spanish and my dad was speaking in English. I don’t know why they did that sometimes, but Ari said his parents did the same thing.

The stars weren’t the same here as they were in the desert, on account of all the pesky light pollution.

After a little bit, my neck started getting a little stiff. I suggested we sleep on the hammock instead of the ground. It would be much more comfortable.

“Can we both fit?” Ari was definitely skeptical of my idea.

“Sure, it’s a big hammock. You lay one way and I’ll lay the other and we’ll sleep head to toe.”

“That means I have to smell your stinky feet all night?”

“My feet smell like roses,” I laughed. “Or at the very least, grass. Come on. I guarantee you it will be better than the ground.”

So we situated ourselves on the hammock. We unzipped a sleeping bag and draped it over ourselves. Gravity had its way with us and we both slid toward the center. His bare legs pressed into the side of my hips and chest. I draped my hand over his legs (his leg hair was surprisingly soft). He didn't say anything to stop me. It took a long time for my heart to calm down. But eventually it did and we rocked and swayed in the gentle wind. Eventually I shut my eyes and began drifting off to sleep.

“I’ve never slept on a hammock before,” I said, yawning. “I feel like I’m in the _Swiss Family Robinson_ or _Treasure Island_. Or I’m one of the lost boys from _Peter Pan_.”

“Well it’s a good thing I always keep a compass on me, then.”


	15. Imagine There's No Light Pollution (Watercolor and Ink)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Image link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0w2zrxqd9o6ve1/stars.jpg?dl=0)


	16. Rules

One of the reasons I liked Ari so much was that though we differed in opinion about many things (like which are the best comics) and though we had what might seem from the outside as diametrically opposed outlooks on life (his was much darker than mine; in fact he once claimed that brooding was healthy because it was good exercise for his eyebrows) and though he enjoyed yanking my chain about a lot of things, when it came down to it he made me laugh more than just about any other person on the planet. We were like seatbelts: we just clicked. He might not have thought so himself, but he had a big imagination and was very thoughtful and philosophical and funny and sensitive and kind. There was also a sadness in him that he tried to hide from me, but I could see it in his eyes sometimes. We never talked about it, though. He was better at not talking about things than I was.

In truth, I liked it when he argued with me (though _argue_ isn’t really the right word, since we never got angry at each other; _debate_ would be more accurate). And I especially liked when I was able to win him over. I’d been on Debate and Speech teams since middle school so he must have known that he never stood a chance when I got into that point-counterpoint mode but he never got cranky with me. (Or if he did, I knew it was all for show).

One area where he eventually came around to my way of thinking was my thing about liking rules. I have a general respect for rules and discipline and technique. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not a pro-fascist or anything like that and I like the idea of chaos and nihilism just as much as the next teenager longing for independence. And I also know that breaking the rules is fun, too, and often a necessity in creating art and living the life you want to live. But I can see why rules are useful, too, especially if they grant you freedom within structure. I think your brain starts working differently if you're trying to compose a sonnet in iambic pentameter vs if you're writing a stream of consciousness journal entry. Neither is better or worse, but rules can be part of the fun and the challenge.

My thing with liking to cuss, for example. I liked cussing but knew that I wouldn’t relish it quite as much if my parents allowed me to throw around f-bombs any old effing time I felt like it. Or my thing about not liking to wear shoes. Who was the puritanical jerk who decided that it's a Western societal norm that everyone has to wear shoes everywhere they go, anyway? If I want to take my shoes off outside or on the bus or in church or in the movie theater and I'm not hurting or offending anyone by letting my toes feel the wind and sun and air, why should I keep my shoes on when they cause me nothing but torture and discomfort? When did taking off your shoes in public become as bad as breaking one of the Ten Commandments? And it’s a good general life rule to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, right? I just choose a literal interpretation of that since he didn’t wear shoes either.

But where things like games were concerned, I liked rules. I thought of rules as being like a container or a cup for water (in this metaphor water=fun and freedom). Without the container, what do you get? Just liquid spilled all over the front of your shirt.

I liked coming up with new games for us, with the caveat that we played by the self-established rules. The first game we made up together was the shoe toss game (or as I named it: Urban Javelshoe). It started out simply because I felt like throwing my shoes around (because shoes are a nuisance and may as well be walloped for all the good they serve). At first he griped at me because I wanted to measure with chalk exactly how far each of us could throw our shoes on the street. He said it took away the fun, which to him was the act of throwing. I argued that the fun was not just the throwing, but the whole system we created together: deciding how many tosses we made per set, using chalk and a tape measure to record each of our throws, deciding how many sets qualified for a win. Just throwing shoes around for no reason? Plebian. This was much more interesting and systematic and fun. He came around, eventually. And though I won the game, he ended up having the longest recorded toss, which I could tell he was secretly pleased about.

Here are some of the other games we made up that summer:

  1. Tap-Out. One of us would tap or punch out the beat to a song on the other person’s arm and the other would try and guess the song just based on the rhythm. We’d decide on the genre (such as Top 40 or The Beatles) and if the person didn’t guess right after three tap-outs then the tapper could hum the rhythm once (with no varied notes, just the rhythm on one straight note). After five rounds, the winner got to choose which music we listened to all afternoon.
  2. Lava Ground. We’d play this in the yard or up in my room. You’d have to leap from place to place and land on furniture, cushions, pillows, clothes, shoes or basically whatever you could maneuver to land on as long as you didn't touch the ground (because it was made of lava). If your bare skin touched the ground you had to act out a horrific death. The loser also had to clean up everything that we ended up spreading out on the floor or grass.
  3. Passenger Palaver. We’d come up with stories about our fellow passengers during our afternoon bus rides. At first there were no rules but then I decided that one of us should make up a line or phrase for the story and the person telling the story would have to somehow include that phrase. Or sometimes we’d trade off after each line, making up the story together as we went along.
  4. The Superhero Origin Generator. We’d go around my house and each of us would pick out two objects (such as a rolling pin and toothbrush). The other person would then have to make up how those two objects led to the creation of a superhero’s powers. For example: _Mikey’s mother is a baker. One day her collection of rolling pins falls on her head and she tragically dies before young Mikey’s very own eyes. He grows up hating anything sweet. He despises cakes and donuts and cookies because they remind him of his dead mom. As a result, he becomes obsessed with brushing his teeth and never has a single cavity. But one day he has a mysterious tooth ache so he goes to a dentist’s check up. He doesn’t know that this dentist is in fact evil and while he’s in the dentist’s chair getting his teeth X-rayed, the evil dentist Dr. X turns up the machine to unprecedented levels. Mikey’s teeth become radioactive blasters. After that, every time he smiles, it unleashes a ray of toxic light more powerful than the sun. From that day forward he becomes: Gamma Tooth Man_. If something we came up was particularly good we might make our own comic about it. Ari wasn’t much of an artist, so I’d draw and he’d come up with action, dialogue and concept. We made a good team.
  5. Telenovela Lipread. We’d put a soap opera on silent and make up our own lines of dialogue. The only rule was that each character needed its own distinct voice or accent. Ari was surprisingly good at playing naïve love struck heroines (ironically, of course).



One day, after I’d just finished reading all of _The Lord of the Rings_ books, I got the idea that Ari and I should make up our own language, like Elvish.

When I told Ari about my idea, he snorted and said, “So you’d rather make up an entirely new language than learn Spanish? You really hate Spanish that much?”

“If we had our own language we could write each other notes and letters and be the only ones who understand them. If they're in Spanish our parents could snoop.”

“If you wanted to write in secret you could just make up a code, not a whole new language. That seems like a lot of work.”

“If Tolkien could do it how hard can it actually be?”

“How the hell do you go about making up a new language anyway?”

“I’m not sure. We might have to do some research.”

“Research? During the summer? For no other reason than you think it would be cool to undertake the massively insane project of inventing a new language?”

“Yeah. We’d be be like C-3PO when R2-D2 beeps and no one else knows what he’s saying.”

“Yes, but they’re talking in droidspeak. It’s probably just randomly generated gobbledygook.”

“Or maybe it’s as poetic as Shakespeare. But we’ll never know. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to speak a language only one other person on the planet understands?”

“It sounds exclusionary. I’m a man of the people.”

“You’re a man of the lazy. Come on, let’s go to the library so I can search the card catalogue about books on linguistics.”

So we went to the library. I love the library. I love the card catalogue. It makes finding the perfect book like going on a treasure hunt. While I was talking to the librarian, Ari wandered away from the desk and told me he was going to look around. No card catalogue for him, he was a browser.

It took awhile but I eventually located some potentially useful book on linguistics and went looking for Ari. I looked in every section I thought he would be, but he had vanished; I even looked in the bathroom and outside on the street. I went up to the 2nd floor and he wasn’t there. I looked on the 1st floor again. Nothing. I was starting to get worried. I went down to the ground floor level and that’s when I finally spotted him. He was sitting at the microfilm reader of all things. I went up to him to see what he was looking at.

“Hey,” I said.

He jumped. I guess I’d startled him.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. Just old newspapers and stuff. I didn’t realize they had all these old articles on microfilm down here. The librarian just told me about it.”

“Anything in particular you’re looking at?”

“No, just browsing.”

“Just browsing El Paso Times articles from ten years ago for fun? And you call me the weird one?”

“Whatever. I thought it might be cool. Like a time machine or something. Are you done? We can leave.”

He pulled the film he was looking at out of the reader and returned it. I also saw that he had a book with him.

“What’s that book? You going to check it out?”

“It’s nothing. Just about the Vietnam War. I was just flipping through it while I waited for you.”

He put the book back on a return cart and we left. On the way home he didn’t talk much and I could tell something was bothering him. But he didn’t tell me what it was and I didn’t press him on it, even though I really wanted to. Like I said, he was better at not talking about things than I was. I thought maybe if we had our own secret language made up already he’d want to talk to me, but I knew that was wishful thinking. We’d only been friends for about a month, but I'd already guessed what most of his rules were. 


	17. Migration

Our yard had a big cedar elm whose branches brushed pretty close to one of my bedroom windows. I think that’s why I would often get birds hanging out on my windowsill. I liked waking up and seeing them there. We kept several bird-feeders around the yard and I liked figuring out which birds were the same ones I saw on my windowsill. I recorded my sightings and observations in a Field Notes journal. One year for Christmas my parents got me a ‘Birds of Texas’ poster with beautiful painted illustrations of common backyard birds. I loved their names: white-winged dove, pyrrhuloxia, canyon towhee, vesper sparrow, crissal thrasher, white-throated swift, red-winged blackbird, house finch, starling. Their names were like poems. I liked drawing birds, too. But not Texas birds, entirely made-up birds: the persimmon-tufted rocketbird, the tawny tailblaster, the water wawso.

The day that I would come to think of as Dead Bird Day began like any other day. The radio alarm woke me up. Stevie Nicks was throatily belting 'The Edge of Seventeen' and a grackle was tittering around my windowsill. I took those as good signs. I whistled to the bird and tapped on the window to say hello. I went downstairs, ate breakfast, and went to the pool to meet Ari. After we were done swimming we went back to my house. We sat on my front porch. My shoes were off and I was staring at my feet. Particularly, I was looking with mild disgust and fascination at all the little hairs on my toes that had suddenly sprung up, as if overnight, like Jack's beanstalk. I wasn’t sure what I felt about them. The last thing I wanted was to end up with hairy and knobby Hobbit feet.

I looked up from my feet and saw that Ari was smiling at me.

“What?” I asked.

“I was just smiling,” he said. “Can’t a guy smile?”

“You’re not telling me the truth.” I’d been trying to work on his whole not-talking thing by calling him out on it (with limited success). Sometimes it worked. Other times he stayed as close-lipped as a clam.

“Okay,” he said. “I was smiling because you were looking at your feet.”

“That’s a funny thing to smile about.”

“It’s weird,” he said. “Who does that—looks at their feet? Except you.”

“It’s not a bad thing to study your own body,” I said. This topic—my body and the changes I’d been going through recently—had been popping up more and more to the forefront of my mind lately. I wanted to talk about it with someone, but as much as I loved my parents they were definitely out of the running and Ari got squeamish about that type of thing. I desperately wanted to know if he was feeling some of the same things I was feeling.

“That’s a really weird thing to say, too,” he said.

But then he’d answer like that and I knew the topic was not open for discussion.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Whatever,” he said.

I changed the subject before either of us could get a chance to get annoyed. “Do you like dogs, Ari?”

“I love dogs.”

“Me too. They don’t have to wear shoes.”

He laughed, his throaty surprised laugh. I loved making him laugh (either intentionally or unintentionally; it didn’t matter to me as long as I was able to chase the sadness out of his eyes).

“I’m going to ask my dad if he’ll get me a dog.” I’d been thinking about it a lot, and I thought I was ready to put Ringo’s memory to rest.

“What kind of dog do you want?”

“I don’t know. One that comes from the shelter. You know, one of those dogs that someone’s thrown away.”

“Yeah, but how will you know which one to pick? There’s a lot of dogs at the shelter. And they all want to be saved.”

“It’s because people are so mean. They throw dogs away like they’re trash. I hate that.”

Then, we heard a loud _pffft_ noise and rustling and boys yelling across the street. There were three boys and two were holding BB guns. I looked up and saw the trail of smoke, then smelled it. One boy was pointing his gun at a tree. “We got one! We got one!” his voice echoed. I realized that they’d killed a bird and were aiming to kill another. And then something fierce and furious inside of me burst open.

I leapt from the porch and ran over to them before I even realized what I was doing. “Hey! Stop that! What the hell’s wrong with you?” I wanted to grab the gun from them but stuck my hand out instead. “Give me that gun.” They were younger and smaller than me, but harder. My heart was thrashing and my right calf muscles were shaky with involuntary spasms but I wasn’t going to let it show to these heartless assholes.

One of the boys sized me up and said, “My ass if I’m gonna give you my BB gun.”

“It’s against the law.”

With one part of my brain I was staring at the boys and trying to make sure they stopped what they were doing. The other part of my brain was trying to figure out if we could still save the bird they’d shot. Could my dad bring it to the vet? I saw its rigid form, its tiny upturned legs, the puncture in the middle of its beautiful white and brown markings and thought crazily _Maybe there’s still a chance_.

“Second amendment,” the boy said.

“Yeah, second amendment,” his idiotic crony repeated.

“The second amendment doesn’t apply to BB guns, you jerk. And besides, guns aren’t allowed on city property.”

“What are planning to do about it, you piece of shit?”

“I’m going to make you stop.”

“How?”

One of the boys took a step toward me and spit on the ground. My body was already coursing with adrenaline and anger but then I got a sudden stab of fear in my belly. They had guns. The logical side of my brain tried to assure myself that I couldn’t die from a BB gun bullet. But it would still hurt like hell if they shot me. Or kicked me or punched me. Or any combination of all three.

“By kicking your skinny little asses all the way to the Mexican border.”

Ari said that, not me. I turned my head and he was right there next to me. I hadn’t realized he’d crossed the street until that very second, that’s how fixated I’d been on stopping the bird killers.

Ari knew how to fight. I didn’t. I’d seen it that very first day I met him but it almost felt like I’d been witnessing a dream or an apparition of him since he had never showed me that other part of him since that day. But here was that other Ari, tough as nails and mean as hell. I could almost smell it on him, how willing he was to beat the crap out of these kids without a moment’s hesitation, the way you can smell a coming thunderstorm. He eyed them down hard. One of the boys raised his gun like he was about to shoot it at us.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you little piece of dog shit,” Ari said in this new voice that was menacing and low and slow as molasses. And then like lightning he reached out and grabbed the gun right out of the boy’s hand. “You’re lucky I don’t shove this up your ass.”

He threw the gun on the ground. It made such a loud clattering noise that I winced, momentarily afraid that he’d accidentally caused it to fire.

The boys also flinched at the noise and the shock of what he’d just done. I thought for sure they’d jump us. But then the fight deflated out of them and they left, cussing us out under their breaths as they went. 

We watched them walk away. Ari’s fists stayed clenched and his shoulders stayed hunched until they were well down the block. Ari and I looked at each other. I felt like the wind had just got knocked out of me.

“I didn’t know you liked to fight,” I said. Though this wasn’t entirely true. I knew he could hold his own. I didn’t know that a willingness to fight was hovering just below the surface, ready to bolt into violent action at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t really. Not really,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “You like to fight.”

“Maybe I do,” he said. “And I didn’t know you were a pacifist.”

“Maybe I’m not a pacifist. Maybe I just think you need a good reason to go around killing birds.” I looked at him. His jaw was still clenched and his breathing was a little heavy. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to hug him. Or maybe I wanted him to hug me. “You’re good at tossing around bad words, too.”

“Yeah, well, Dante, let’s not tell your mom.”

“We won’t tell yours either.”

He looked at me. “I have a theory about why moms are so strict.”

“It’s because they love us, Ari.”

“That’s part of it. The other part of it is that they want us to stay boys forever.”

“Yeah, I think that would make my mom happy—if I was a boy forever.”

I looked at the bird again. I knew it was dead this time. I don’t know why I thought a few minutes ago I’d be able to save it, like I was a saint or Jesus or God. I hated those boys who killed it. I hated how careless and callous they were about wiping out such a beautiful, harmless creature without so much as a second thought. And then leaving it there like just another piece of trash on the side of the road.

“I’ve never seen you that mad,” Ari said.

“I’ve never seen you that mad, either.”

Neither of us spoke. We both just looked at the bird. I felt for a second like the bird was fluttering inside my chest, banging its fragile body against my throat and wildly flapping its wings like it was trying to escape out of a cage. But then I realized I was just trying to keep myself from crying in front of Ari.

“It’s just a little sparrow,” I said. I felt so sad and small, so useless and weak. I felt the tears coming hot and fast down my cheeks. I turned my face away from Ari.

 _Boys don’t cry_  
_Boys don’t cry_  
_Boys don’t cry_

I hated that. I hated how ashamed I was that I couldn’t stop crying. I walked back across the street and Ari followed me. He didn’t say anything. I threw my shoes at the ground as hard as I could. That made me feel a little bit better. I sat back down on the porch and wiped my eyes.

“Were you scared?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“I was.”

“So?”

So? What did it mean that I was scared and Ari wasn’t? That Ari could defend himself in a fight and I couldn’t? That I was crying and he wasn’t? I’d made up my mind a while ago that I didn’t want to be ashamed of who I was. I told myself that it’s ok to cry. Crying feels good. Crying helps ease the crushing feeling inside before it gets to be too much to bear. But however irrational and stupid it was, I still felt like I’d failed a test.

We didn’t talk for another few minutes. I was going through in my head everything I could remember about sparrows. Most types that live in Texas don’t migrate in the summer months. They stay here year-round. They mostly eat seeds and insects. There are at least 35 species of sparrow. I wondered if the bird they killed was a boy or girl. I didn't know why I wondered that.

Ari broke the silence and asked, “Why do birds exist, anyway?”

“You don’t know?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes.”

By studying birds, humans had figured out how to build airplanes. Now we could easily traverse the globe, pick up and move far away from our original homes. Families could scatter like seeds on the wind. I pictured in my head maps I’d seen of different migratory patterns of birds across North America: the Pacific Flyaway, Central Flyaway, Mississippi Flyaway, Atlantic Flyaway. Birds migrate to go in search of better nourishment and to increase their chance of survival. My parents left their families for probably similar reasons.

I thought: _fly away home, as free as a bird, empty nest, as the crow flies, swan song, wild goose chase, night owl, ugly duckling, odd duck, chicken out, the early bird catches the worm, take under your wing, kill two birds with one stone._

I took a deep breath. “Will you help me bury the bird?” I asked.

“Sure.”

We got a shovel out of the garage. Ari picked up the bird with it and brought it over to my yard. We dug a hole under an oleander and buried the bird there.

I started crying again. This time, I was thinking of when we’d buried Ringo. I still missed him so much. The ache was raw and wide open. Maybe I wasn’t ready to ask for another dog just yet. Or maybe this meant I was ready. My brain was too full to think clearly.

I was also thinking about how beautiful the oleander flowers were and how that made me happy despite the sadness I still felt because of the bird. The blossoms were pink and showy and fragrant. I wanted to pluck one and put it behind my ear. But I couldn’t.

I was thinking how I’ll never fit in anywhere because I’m a migratory bird with no real home to return to.

We stared at the bird’s grave for a little while in silence.

“Thanks,” I said finally.

“Sure,” Ari said.

I was suddenly so tired. I wanted nothing more than to fall right asleep and wake up tomorrow morning to a bird trilling on my windowsill like nothing today had ever happened. But I knew that was as impossible as me bringing the sparrow back to life after the boys shot it.

“Hey,” Ari whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We’ll go swimming,” I said.

“Yeah, we’ll go swimming.”

I went inside. Neither of my parents were home, which was a bit unusual. I took a hot shower and then fell asleep.

When I woke up, my room was dark and I was confused. I saw that I’d only been asleep for a few hours, but I felt like I had been out cold for days. I felt better, though, so I went downstairs. My dad was finishing up making dinner. I hugged both my parents for a long time. I didn’t tell them about the bird but I didn’t need to.

That night, during dinner, my parents told me they had big news. My dad was in the process of final interviews for a visiting professor position in Chicago and we'd know in a week or so whether or not he'd gotten the job. The minute they told me, I burst into tears.


	18. Villanelle for September

**Villanelle for September**

Chicago is a stranger, sleeping  
in my bed. I’ll be gone by September;  
I wonder how the weather will be.

Neither of us has seen four seasons:  
green to orange leaves, white snow, purple springs.  
In El Paso, you’ll be sleeping

and wake up to air wrung out to line dry,  
monsoon swellings and clear blue skies.  
I can only wonder. In Chicago, the winter weather

will be a dripping, obscene gray,  
spring creeping like close footsteps  
of an unseen stranger. Sleeping, El Paso

will seep into my dreams—pink,  
oleander blossoms, small shudders  
in the breeze. I wonder whether

you’ll miss me. You already speak a language  
I can’t understand, and in another eight months  
will you be a stranger to me?  
Without you, I wonder how I’ll weather; be.


	19. Fever Week

I made up my mind not to tell Ari about me possibly moving until my dad’s job offer was finalized. I figured that gave me about a week to work every possible angle to try and convince my parents against moving. Tactic 1: guilt. They knew moving here from California had been a tough transition for me; did they want to put me through a traumatic ordeal like that again? Did they want me to spend all of my penultimate year of high school friendless, depressed and lonely? Tactic 2: accusation. Wasn’t I a part of this family? Didn’t I have a right to voice my opinion and be part of the decision making process? Was this a democracy or a totalitarian dictatorship? Did they think I was still a small child that they could just uproot without so much as asking me if I even wanted to? Tactic 3: bargaining. What if I stayed with Ari while they moved to Chicago for the year? I’d be sixteen soon and people lived away from their parents by that age all the time. My parents listened but didn’t cave. They told me that we’d discuss all the details together as a family once my dad heard whether they’d decided to hire him or not. Tactic 4: silent treatment.

But I didn’t have a chance to _not_ tell Ari, because he didn’t show up the next morning for our usual morning swim. We’d gotten into the habit of meeting up on the early side, around 10am, and swimming together before the pool got too crowded and the sun got too hot and high in the sky. Then we’d go to my house for lunch and after that ride the bus aimlessly or go to the movies or arcade, or we’d spend the afternoon reading in my room or coming up with whatever other ways we could think of to spend time together. 10am turned into 10:15am. I swam laps for half an hour. I got out of the pool and asked the lifeguard on duty if he’d seen Ari earlier that morning. Had I missed him?

“Who?” the lifeguard said blandly.

“Ari, the guy I’m usually here with every day? Have you seen him today?”

“You think I can tell any of you kids apart?”

“We’re not kids. And believe it or not, it’s actually part of your job description to pay attention, not to ogle at every girl in a bikini who walks by.”

I heard him mutter something rude under his breath as I walked off but I didn’t care. I swam more laps but had a nervous jittery feeling and couldn’t relax and focus into the rhythm of swimming like I usually could. After each lap I couldn’t resist looking around to see if he’d shown up. At noon I went home. I was confused, hurt, angry and worried. These were not emotions that sat well inside my body. They made my stomach hurt. He probably had a perfectly good reason for not coming to the pool today. Maybe he had to help his mom with something, like a shift at the food bank. Maybe he’d just forgotten to tell me yesterday because of everything that happened with the neighborhood kids killing the sparrow.

I spent the rest of the afternoon painting (very splatter-heavy Jackson Pollock-inspired abstract pieces good for expelling pent-up emotions). I barely spoke to my parents at dinner (see above re: silent treatment). I thought about looking up Ari’s number in the phone book and calling him to see where he’d been that morning and if we’d swim with each other the next day like he'd told me we would after we buried the sparrow together. But I thought better of it. I was too afraid that the reason he hadn’t showed up today had something to do with me crying so much yesterday. He wasn’t that type of person, though, was he?

My parents knew I was upset and assumed it was still just because of the job news. They suggested we eat ice cream and watch _Cosmos_ together after dinner. I reluctantly agreed. Thinking about the universe made me feel better, as did the chocolate fudge sundaes. My parents must have known that would work, darn them. Before I went up to my room for bed, my mom put her hand on my knee and said quietly, “I’m sorry you’re upset about the move, Dante. We’ll talk it all through together as a family. We want what’s best for you and want you to be happy. But we also need to think of what’s best for your father’s career and for the family as a whole unit. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes, that’s what growing up and putting the people you love before yourself is all about. We love you, Dante.”

“I know. I love you, too.”

The next morning, Ari was a no show yet again. I finished up an hour of laps alone and got out of the pool. I was scanning the crowd for him when the same lifeguard from yesterday said, “What? Your boyfriend stood you up again for your date?” and I knew that if Ari were here he would have flipped him off (or worse). I didn’t say anything, but gave him my best icy stare and scratched my nose with my middle finger prominently. I thought maybe he’d ban me from the pool for life but I kept walking back into the locker room before he could say anything more. I’d never flipped anyone off before, and I have to say, it was an adrenaline rush. But I wasn’t planning to make a habit of it. I didn’t know how Ari could act so cool and tough without his stomach cramping.

At this point I was less angry with Ari and more worried that something awful had happened to him. His parents would have told me if something had happened to him, right? I didn’t need to worry; I was overreacting. It was probably a good thing he wasn’t around since my head was still wrapped up in thoughts of moving away from him. I’d be no fun to be around right now, anyway. I resisted the urge to walk over to his house. I went to the library and looked up books about Chicago and news articles on microfilm about Chicago’s terrible crime rate and history of mob and gangster violence, hoping to have an arsenal of scary statistics to strong arm my parents into letting us stay in El Paso (for my own safety and security, of course). It sort of backfired, though, since one of the books I found was all about the history of Chicago’s architecture and I have to say, it was pretty cool imagining myself living in an art deco city like Superman’s Metropolis.

I didn’t go to the pool on the third morning. I stayed in bed and read poetry by E.E. Cummings and W.S. Merwin (it crossed my mind that if Ari was a poet he might want to go by the moniker A.A. Men., like Amen, and then I was sad that he wasn't here for me to tell him that to) and I tried not to feel too sorry for myself. I hoped Ari would come knocking on my door and ask where I’d been that morning and why wasn't I at the pool like usual? But all that happened was my dad asking me if I was feeling sick or if something had happened with Ari. I told him the truth, Ari hadn’t met me at the pool all week and I hadn’t heard from him. We left it at that.

On the fourth morning I went back, just in case he was there. It was a mistake. The lifeguard I’d flipped the bird to called me a rude word in Spanish and said he’d have his eye on me. He watched me from his perch like he was the Eye of Sauron. It gave me the creeps, so I left after only a few laps.

I was getting desperate. I didn’t understand why Ari was ignoring me like this. I was surprised by how much his rejection stung, how much I’d let myself look forward to seeing him every day; not just look forward to it, but ration my own happiness knowing it would be sweeter and more expansive when we shared it, together. I told myself this was a good thing, to know what this feels like now, since I’d most likely be gone from El Paso by September. This ache would be the new normal soon enough. He was inadvertently using the ‘rip the band-aid right off method’, and though it might hurt like hell in the moment it was better in the long run, wasn’t it? But I didn’t want him ripped out of my life. I wanted…I couldn’t verbalize it but it was the farthest thing from this empty hallow feeling inside my chest.

I looked up his number in the phone book. There were probably over 1,000 Mendozas in El Paso, but only one whose absence I felt the way I imagined an amputee felt about a phantom limb. I knew his dad’s name, Jaime. I knew the street he lived on. I found his number, but I didn’t call that night. I’m not sure why. I went to bed and dreamed of a labyrinthine maze of enormous hedges made of phone books. Ari and I were separated from each other in different areas of the maze, shouting and trying to direct ourselves out and back to each other, but there was a faceless psychopath chasing me with a chainsaw, a scene my brain lifted straight out of _The Shining_ (which has given me a nearly infinite supply of nightmare imagery since I watched it without my parents’ permission with a group of my older cousins in LA when I was eleven).

I woke up from my dream with a start on the fifth morning. I’d slept in, knowing the night before I wouldn’t be going to the pool in the morning. I went downstairs to eat breakfast, though it was late enough to be lunchtime. I told myself enough was enough. I opened the phonebook back up to Ari’s number. Then the phone rang, and I knew before I even picked it up that it was him.

“You haven’t been going to the pool,” I said. It came out angrier than I thought it would.

“I’ve been in bed. I caught the flu. Mostly I’ve been sleeping, having really bad dreams, and eating chicken soup.”

Bad dreams? I thought of last night’s maze dream. I wondered what Ari’s nightmares looked like and I wondered what he looked like dreaming them. I imagined myself leaning over him in his bed while he slept, pressing a warm compress onto his forehead and telling him everything would be all right.

“Fever?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Achy bones?”

“Yeah.”

“Night sweats?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad stuff,” I said. And then, since I couldn’t contain my curiosity, “What were your dreams about?”

“I can’t talk about them.”

I expected as much.

“Can you come over? I promise not to cough on you?” he asked and I grabbed my things and was out the door in less than a minute.


	20. Ari and The Rocking Chair (pencil and charcoal sketches)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Image 1 link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8do2hgil3y04cmw/arireading.JPG?dl=0)   
>  [Image 2 link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rz07m56un6s5t53/arisleeping.jpg?dl=0)   
>  [Image 3 link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayq2sg4appx06yk/chair2.jpg?dl=0)   
> 


	21. Skirting and Sketching

I brought my sketchpad, charcoal pencils and the book of poetry by W.S. Merwin I’d been reading earlier in the week with me over to Ari’s house. When I got there I took my shoes off and left them on his front porch, Japanese style, so I wouldn’t track any dirt inside. I rang the doorbell and Ari’s mom greeted me.

“Dante, it’s so nice to see you. I’m glad you’re here. Ari’s been having a tough week.”

“Yeah he said on the phone he’s had a bad flu. I think getting sick during the summer should be illegal, don’t you? It’s…incongruous.”

“Incongruous,” she repeated with a laugh. She had a lovely low honey laugh like Ari’s. He must have inherited it from her. “It certainly is. His fever broke but he’s still a bit out of sorts.”

“I was worried about him when he didn’t show up at the pool this week.”

“I’m sorry about that, I didn’t think. I should have let you know he was under the weather.”

“It’s ok, I’m just glad he’s feeling better now.”

“He’s in his room. Would you like anything to drink?”

“No thanks, I’m good. I’ll just go see how Ari’s doing.”

“Ok, let me know if you two want a snack. I still have half a big pot of chicken soup left and Ari is going on a soup boycott, so you’re welcome to have some.”

“Thanks Mrs. Mendoza, I bet it’s delicious.”

“Lilliana. Mrs. Mendoza reminds me of my students and this is still summer break after all. You remember where Ari’s room is? Just down the hallway on the right.”

“Yes, thanks.”

I approached Ari’s room and stood in the doorway. He was lying in his bed on top of the covers, wearing his ratty Santana t-shirt and checkered pajama bottoms. He wasn’t reading or anything, just looking up at the ceiling. He had dark under eye circles and his hair looked exactly how you’d expect for someone who’d been stuck in bed for four days: a little greasy and matted and pillow-flattened and cowlick-y. His rumpledness made him look younger and more vulnerable, which isn't a word I ever thought I'd use to describe him. He turned his head and looked at me. Smiled, but with sad eyes. All the mess of hurt feelings that had been cycling through me all week seemed to slip instantly away the minute I saw that tired little half-smile. My chest felt tight. I was so happy to see him.

“Hi,” I said.

“You forgot your shoes,” he said. Honestly, he was obsessed with my shoes (or lack thereof).

“I donated them to the poor.”

“Guess the jeans are next.” (The jeans I was wearing were basically in tatters, but I didn't care because they were my favorite and unbelievably soft).

“Yeah," I said and we both laughed. His honey laugh was still there, just a little raspier than normal.

I examined him closer. “You look a little pale.”

“I still look more Mexican than you do.”

“Everybody looks more Mexican than I do. Pick it up with the people who handed me my genes.” I’d meant for it to come out flippantly, our regular joke, ha-ha, but was surprised to hear more than a tinge of bitterness in my voice.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “So you brought your sketch pad.” He knew me well enough to change the subject away from all the Mexican stuff.

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to show me your drawings?”

“Nope. I’m going to sketch you.”

The idea to sketch him had come to me earlier in the week, after my parents told me about Chicago, because I wanted a way to remember him if we ended up moving. We didn’t have any photos of each other (I planned to remedy that by convincing him to go into a photobooth with me the next time we went to the arcade). I’d drawn pictures of him from memory, but they didn’t quite capture his features in a way that I was happy with. They were my filtered and cartoonish reinterpretation of him, which is not the same as when you can draw someone when they’re right in front of you. When they let you really look at them.

“What if I don’t want to be sketched?” he said and I smiled at what a typically obstinate Ari response it was.

“How am I going to be an artist if I can’t practice?”

“Don’t artists’ models get paid?”

“Only the ones that are good-looking.”

“So I’m not good-looking?”

He arched an eyebrow and we looked at each other for a brief moment. Was he messing with me? 'Good-looking'? Who was he kidding? That was like describing the sky as simply ‘blue’ when there are words out there like azure, sapphire, cerulean, or cornflower. _Heart wrenchingly_ _beautiful._ Those are the word I would have chosen, if he’d asked me sincerely, not as a breezy offhand joke, what I really thought when I looked at him. Even in his post-flu state, all disheveled hair, sallow skin and blood-shot eyes, he was still the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.“Don’t be an asshole,” I said, pure deflection, because I was beginning to feel my cheeks and neck get incriminatingly hot but I tried to shrug it off, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Of course he'd notice. He had eyes and my face was probably redder than a fire engine. Cardinal red. Russet. Sanguine.

Then something happened I wouldn't have predicted. Ari’s face got red, too. Was this some sort of belated fever symptom? He was the last guy in the world who I thought was capable of blushing. “So you’re really going to be an artist?” he asked to the ceiling, not me.

“Absolutely. You don’t believe me?” I found in that moment I could look nowhere else but his flushed cheeks and his lips, which were a little chapped, but still perfectly pink.

“I need evidence,” he said.

I sat down on his rocking chair and got my pencils and sketchbook out, fiddling a bit and taking more time than was probably necessary, since I realized that if I looked at him again right away I was afraid of what might come out of my mouth. It took a second for my heart to stop jack-hammering. When I’d gotten all my supplies ready I looked back at him, this time in the subjective and focused way an artist looks at a subject, not the confusing and dizzying way a friend looks at another friend’s lips.

“You still look sick.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe it’s your dreams.”

“Maybe.”

“When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I’d get up and look in the mirror and my eyes were sad.”

As a child the idea of atomic bombs and nuclear war had both terrified and fascinated me, especially after my grade school teachers made us practice emergency “duck and cover” drills. Later when we learned about the Vietnam War and I read that Little Boy was the codename for the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, I thought immediately of those drills. All of our little bodies crouched in rows by our hallway lockers, our little hands covering our little heads.

“You mean like mine,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“My eyes are always sad.”

The way he looked at me made me wonder if we were still talking about our dreams or were we talking about something else?

“The world isn’t ending, Ari.”

“Don’t be an asshole," he said. I liked that he’d repeated my phrase from earlier. It made me smile, despite the seriousness of the subject we were skirting around. “Of course it’s not ending.”

“Sad, sad, sad,” I said.

“Sad, sad, sad,” he said, turning it into another one of our little games.

This time I laughed in earnest, because it was almost like he’d read my mind, knowing how much I liked my words repeated back to me from his lips. Like I’d given him a present and he’d given me one, too, and when we opened them up we couldn’t help but laugh because we’d both given each other the exact same gift.

“I want to draw you.”

“Can I stop you?”

“You’re the one who said you needed evidence.”

I threw him the book of poems I’d brought. “Read it. You read. I’ll draw.”

I turned my attention to studying the room around him, my focus narrowing to lines and light. I looked at Ari, wondering how I could possibly capture in two-dimensional markings, shades and shapes the complexity of him and what he made me feel inside? But I had to try. I blurred my eyes momentarily to get a sense of just the light hitting his face and skin, like the smooth under painting before all the details are added to the surface of a canvas. I could tell he was nervous because he kept fidgeting and hadn’t opened the book. I was nervous, too. But I tried to project nothing but calmness so he would let me keep looking at him. I furrowed my brow in slightly exaggerated concentration so he’d get that me looking at him was just an artist-subject thing. Nothing to be scared or uncomfortable about.

“Make me look good,” he said.

“Read. Just read.”

He relaxed eventually. I did, too, though in a way that is similar to swimming, when you get ‘in the zone’ and a different part of your brain takes the reigns and you stop second guessing what your body is doing, so you are focused and relaxed at the same time. Breathing helps. He got caught up in reading the book of poems, which I knew he would like. There was one poem in particular I liked the most, "Youth". One line— _from what we cannot know the stars are made—_ reminded me of my favorite Carl Sagan quote: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” I thought about the carbon in the pencil I was holding, how it was made of the same starstuff as I was and Ari was. I tried to not only capture him on the paper, but cement all the little details of him in my memory as well. I knew I’d need them stored up so I could call upon them later, if the unthinkable happened and my family ended up moving to Chicago.

I drew and drew and drew. I was greedy for the smallest of details. The precise curve and thickness of his eyelashes. The twin crescent creases that formed between his eyebrows and the way he’d stick his tongue out a little when he was really concentrating on understanding a difficult line of poetry. The way the sunlight wrapped around his jaw and cheekbones, softening them and drawing attention to their attractive angles at the same time. And his hair. Since I couldn’t actually touch it, my pencils became a proxy for my fingers and I tried to capture the exact way his hair swooped lazily across his forehead, the nearly infinite shades of black, the tiny wisps at the nape of his neck. I could have drawn just his hair for hours.

At some point, he shifted his position so he wasn’t leaning up against his bed's headboard to read, but lying on his side, one hand propping up his head, the book of poems open on the bed in front of him. I watched him close his eyes briefly. Then shift so that the pillow was under his head, not his hand. He made a valiant effort to keep reading but eventually closed his eyes again. His breathing evened and he drifted off to sleep. I drew him just like that. It was the best gift he could have given me.

When I was certain he was sleeping deeply enough that I wouldn’t disturb him, I quietly moved off of the rocking chair and pulled his blanket up around him. I sat down next to him for a while, matching my breath to his. I was careful not to touch him, so I wouldn’t accidentally wake him up. He looked so peaceful it almost made me want to cry. I hoped that his period of nightmares was behind him.

I looked around his room and my eyes were drawn to the rocking chair I’d vacated. I liked the way the light hit it and the long shadows it cast on the blank white wall (since Ari had taken down all his posters). I tapped the curved base with my toe to make it move back and forth. It kept rocking for a long time on its own after I’d lifted my foot away because his window was open and there was a slight breeze coming through. Or maybe, I thought, because a ghost was sitting in it. An old world-weary ghost enjoying its ghost retirement relaxing in a rocking chair. For some reason, that made me smile. The chair was alone, but not alone, since I was there, and maybe the ghost, too. I drew the chair and it wasn’t until I was done that I realized that I was actually drawing Ari.

I left the drawing for him. Maybe he’d think it was just a chair. Or maybe he’d see something else, like I had.

I left a note with the drawing for him to read when he woke up.

_Ari,_

_I hope you like the sketch of your chair. I miss you at the pool. The lifeguards are jerks._

_Dante_


	22. Hailstorm

When you’re playing your life back in your memory like a movie, there are days that get spliced together in a montage; full days, weeks, months or years that get cut; scenes that make you laugh, cry or cringe; scenes where the anticipatory build-up to the big milestone moment may overshadow the actual moment itself; scenes that get reshaped and retold so often they become more tall tale than actual memory; scenes that might seem eerie in how they predicted a future you didn’t realize would happen but you are now living as your present-future self, looking back. The crazy thing is that while you’re living it you have little way of knowing which days will blend together and which days will be the ones you remember for the rest of your life. Those days that you reach back into your memory to find when you need to feel something—anything—joy or sorrow, pride or remorse; scenes that make you think _this is my life, for better and worse_.

The day I could have died but Ari saved my life; that turned out to be one of the days I know I’ll never be able to forget, even if I wanted to. Even though, afterwards, he wanted me to forget it, or at the very least, never speak about it ever again.

* * *

It happened two days after I’d gone over to his house and sketched him. I could have died on a Monday. I’ll always remember that because the day before was a Sunday and my parents and I had gone to church and after services they asked if I wanted to go to my favorite diner for lunch. I had a feeling that the other shoe was about to drop about Chicago because we rarely went out to eat except for special occasions. But I held onto a fragment of hope that maybe I was wrong and maybe they just weren’t in the mood to cook that day. I ordered chocolate chip pancakes and a milkshake and I knew I was done for when my mom didn’t make a single comment about the pitiful lack of nutritional value in the meal I’d just chosen. It didn’t matter anyway because I barely touched a bite of my food.

Turns out I wasn’t wrong in guessing that this was their way of trying to soften the blow. My father had indeed received the job offer for the visiting professor position. Both of my parents wanted him to take the job. My mom brought up the whole ‘love is all about sacrifice’ thing again and how she was willing to put her own practice on hold for the year in support of my father. They talked about the diversity of Chicago and all of the cultural opportunities it offered that were harder to find here in El Paso. They’d make sure to find a high school with a first-rate swim team and art department for me. I wasn’t drinking the ‘Chicago is all happy unicorns and puppies’ Kool Aid and I wasn’t going to do down without a fight, so I tried bringing up all the unflattering things I’d read about inner-city Chicago, going so far as to refer to it as ‘the ghetto’. That tactic didn’t go over well. My parents knew much more about sociology and history than I did and I ended up receiving a long lecture about how the huge economic imbalances and segregation found in most cities stretched back to the institutionalized racism the country was built on; we were lucky enough to be able to move to a safe neighborhood with excellent schools, not one plagued by violence, and that’s something I should not take for granted or make light of. Then for good measure they threw in a guilt-trip about how hard each of them worked to fight for their education and to make their way out of the poverty their families were born into in Mexico. They told me to think of most of my cousins, how they’d never have the same educational opportunities as I would unless they decided to really fight for it, like my parents had.

I didn’t tell them that being around my cousins made me feel like a weirdo at best, an outcast at worst. I listened to their lecture, ears red with shame and my tail between my legs, and drank my milkshake. They assured me that the year would fly by and if I didn’t like Chicago we could move back to El Paso. It would be my choice.

Monday morning I called Ari to see if he was feeling well enough to go swimming with me. He told me he couldn't because his mom was making him go to a doctor's appointment later that day, even though his fever was gone. We ended up talking about our families. He told me he had an older brother, who was in prison. I was shocked for a moment after he told me. He’d never mentioned him before because talking about his brother made him feel awful. I wished we were speaking in person, not over the phone, so I could look him straight in the eyes and tell him _Please don’t be sad or ashamed. It’s not your fault._

“Ari, you didn’t do anything,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk about him, okay, Dante?”

“Okay.” I knew now wasn’t the time to needle him about his tendency to stew in stoic silence. “But you know, Ari, you have this really interesting life.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, really. At least you have siblings. Me, I only have a mother and a father.”

“What about cousins?”

“They don’t like me. They think I’m—well, they think I’m a little different. They’re really Mexican, you know. And I’m sort of, well, what did you call me?”

“A _pocho_.”

“That’s exactly what I am.”

I told him about my mom’s family, about how she grew up really poor and had to work to put herself through college and grad school. How my parents met at Berkeley and how the life their parents envisioned for them was not the one they wanted and they had to fight for that new life, together.

“It’s like my mom and dad created a whole new world for themselves. But they understand the old world—where they came from—and I don’t. I don’t belong anywhere. That’s the problem.”

“You do,” he said. “You belong everywhere you go. That’s who you are.”

A thought came to me then. I was surprised by the force with which it sprung into my brain; it almost made me dizzy or feel like I was gasping for air after having my head submerged too long underwater, even though looking back, how could I have been surprised, because the signs were all pointing there all along but I’d been too focused on my blind spots to notice them. I wanted to tell him in these precise words: _I never felt like I belonged here in El Paso, not until I met you, Ari. You make me feel like I belong. Because I belong with you._

I couldn’t say it, of course. Instead, I said, “You’ve never seen me around my cousins. I feel like a freak.”

“I know,” he said. “I feel like a freak too.” That surprised me.

“Well, at least you’re a real Mexican.”

“What do I know about Mexico, Dante?”

Neither of us said anything for a little while _._ “Do you think it will always be this way?” I said.

“What?”

“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

But I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Not to tell him about Chicago or to tell him that even if we were separated by thousands of miles, part of me would always belong to him, if only he’d let me offer it to him. But I swallowed those words and bit my tongue, too, just in case I would be foolishly tempted to say anything stupid. I realized after that conversation that loving your best friend meant learning to keeping lots of things unsaid.

* * *

I thought I wouldn’t be able see Ari until the next day or day after. But he surprised me by calling me up after his doctor’s appointment was over; since the doctor had given him a clean bill of health his mom had lifted his house arrest so he could meet me at the pool if I wanted.

It was late afternoon by the time we got there. Ari was still pretty worn out from being sick so I swam alone for a bit and then we both floated on our backs. We watched as enormous gray clouds churned and rolled by and the color of the sky darkened from blue to slate. We listened, as the wind rustling in nearby leaves got louder and more urgent and far-off thunder rumbled in a way you felt all the way in your teeth and bones. Then the lifeguards blew their whistles and everyone had to get out of the pool. They were closing it early because of the coming storm.

The sky split open when we were still a block away from my house.

Ari looked at me and said, “I won’t run if you don’t.” It was like a dare.

“I won’t run.” Challenge accepted.

Our steps were achingly slow and deliberate. We kept smiling at each other to see if either of us would break down and make a mad dash for it. Neither of us did. We went slower than if we were acting out a slow-motion sequence of a film. Sloth slow. Glacier slow.

His hair was already wet from the pool, but pool-wet hair and rain-wet hair are two entirely different things. I watched as he closed his eyes and tipped his head back while the rain slid through his hair in rivulets, forming little drops right at the tendril tips that trailed down his forehead and neck. The part of me that now recognized that I was very much falling in love with him wanted to reach out and feel the silky slickness of his hair, wanted to drink from the little pool of water forming in the delicate hallow of his neck between his collarbones. I shivered and stuck out my tongue to taste the raindrops instead.

We were drenched by the time we made it down the block to my house.

My dad was none too thrilled when he saw us. He gave me an earful about not having any common sense blah blah blah. I could tell he was mostly mad because he was worried, since Ari had just got over a bad flu. (I didn’t tell him that walking in the rain had been Ari’s idea!).

He made us change into dry clothes. I lent Ari a pair of my sweatpants and a soft t-shirt. I changed in my room and he changed in the bathroom. When he came out wearing my clothes, my body reacted in a way I’d never experienced before. I felt tight all over, almost like I was clamping down my muscles in anticipation of a getting punched, except it was almost pleasurable, like my blood was squeezing my muscles and bones. I liked seeing him in my clothes like that so much it almost hurt.

I handed him a towel for his hair because a wet line was forming down the back of his (my!) t-shirt. Another bolt ripped through me when I thought about how nice it would be to dry his body all off for him, gently, with my favorite fluffy towel. I turned away from him and started flipping through my record collection.

“Does your dad ever get really mad?” he asked.

“He doesn’t get mad very often. Hardly at all. But when he does get mad, I try to stay out his way.”

“What does he get mad at?”

“I threw out all his papers once.” (I’m not proud of this).

“You did that?”

“He wasn’t paying any attention to me.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.” This was right after we’d moved to El Paso.

“So you made him mad on purpose.”

“Something like that.”

Ari started coughing just then and I got really worried. Maybe my dad was right to have lectured us after all.

“Hot tea,” I said. Ari nodded. I grabbed him a pullover sweater and a pair of slippers, too. Just in case he got the shivers.

I made us tea and we sat on the front porch, watching the storm, which had turned from rain to hail. There’s almost no other feeling in the world that beats watching a wild storm rage knowing you are safe and protected and dry. The hail pounded against the roof. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. The wind was doing a tango through the trees and a slight misty blowback from the rain and hail occasionally brushed my skin. I could see little dewdrops of moisture quiver on my arm hairs.

We watched the storm together for a while, in silence, drinking tea. There was so much I wanted to say to him but I couldn’t figure out how to just open my mouth and start. And if I did start, how much was safe to say? How would I possibly be able to keep everything inside the way Ari was able to? What if I accidentally said something that made me lose my best friend? That thought was impossible, untenable and terrifying. I wouldn’t say anything about the belonging together stuff. That needed to be locked away for my crazy brain only. But I’d realized something, when he told me about this brother being in prison, that there was still so much about each other that we didn’t know. Even though it felt like he’d always been a part of my life, we’d really only known each other for less than one measly summer. Like when I drew him, I needed badly to store up as many little details about him as soon as I could before I left for Chicago.

I took the plunge. I tapped his shoulder and said, “We need to have a conversation.”

“A conversation?”

“A talk.”

“We talk every day.”

“Yeah, but. I mean a talk.”

“About what?”

“About, you know, what we’re like.” He knit his eyebrows and gave me a totally confused look. I changed course. “Our parents. Stuff like that.”

“Did anybody ever tell you that you aren’t normal?”

“Is that something I should aspire to?”

“You’re not. You’re not normal.” This was off to a great start. “Where did you come from?”

“My parents had sex one night.”

The word ‘sex’ coming out of my mouth and reaching his ears felt…weird. Different than when I said cuss words. It felt risqué, a little bold. And embarrassing.

“How do you know it was night?”

“Good point.”

We both cracked up then and the awkward knot I’d been tying myself into eased up a bit. This was how it was supposed to be, me and Ari, relaxed and over brimming with laughter. Loving him didn’t have to change that. Moving away didn’t have to change that. I wouldn’t let it change that.

“Okay,” I said, once we’d both stopped laughing. “This is serious.”

“Is this like a game?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll play.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

“Red. Favorite car?”

“Don’t like cars.”

“Me neither. Favorite song?”

“Don’t have one. Yours?”

“’The Long and Winding Road.’”

“’The Long and Winding Road’?”

“The Beatles, Ari.”

“Don’t know it.”

“Great song, Ari.”

“Boring game, Dante. Are we interviewing each other?”

“Something like that.”

“What position am I applying for?”

“Best friend.”

“I thought I already had that job.”

“Don’t be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.”

I wasn’t planning on it, but I reached over and punched him. Not hard, but not just a little nudge either. That and the cuss words I’d just said made my cheeks flush deeper red than they already were. I was trying to get closer to him the only way I knew how and it was both exhilarating and mortifying. I don’t know what had gotten into me, wanting to use all these cuss words and wanting to touch him and lick the rain off his skin.

Ari laughed. “Nice mouth.”

“Sometimes don’t you just want to stand up and yell out all the cuss words you’ve learned?”

“Every day.”

“Every day? You’re worse than me.” I looked at the hailstones, making a racket as they hit the sidewalk. “It’s like pissed off snow.”

Ari laughed at my choice turn of phrase.

“We’re too nice, you know that?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Our parents turned us into nice boys. I hate that.”

A not nice boy wouldn’t be too afraid to say what he really wanted to say, I’m sure of that.

“I don’t think I’m so nice.”

“Are you in a gang?”

“No.”

“Do you do drugs?”

“No.”

“Do you drink?”

“I’d like to.”

“Me too. But that wasn’t the question.”

“No, I don’t drink.”

“Do you have sex?”

I wasn’t looking at Ari when I said it. We were both looking out at the hail beating down against the cement. My heartbeat felt just as loud, like the ball bearing in a can of spray paint when you shake it all up before you let it out with a shhhhhhh.

“Sex?”

“Sex, Ari.”

“No, never had sex, Dante. But I’d like to.”

Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

“Me too. See what I mean? We’re nice.”

“Nice,” he repeated. “Shit.”

“Shit,” I said back to him.

Then we both looked at each other and busted out laughing.

We shot questions at each other on all sorts of topics for rest of the afternoon. I tried to keep a mental tally of every little factoid that came out of his mouth, cramming my brain full of the most seemingly banal Ari-isms like I was trying to memorize words off of flash cards the night before a big test. And I wanted him to know me equally, as well. I wanted to share the most banal and important and secret and sacred parts of myself as easily as we could share a pair of sweatpants or a tshirt. I knew we couldn’t get there in just one day. But I had to start somewhere.

Favorite food. Favorite ballplayer. Favorite novel. Favorite poet. Favorite holiday. Favorite school subject. Favorite superhero. Favorite month. Favorite artist. Favorite time of day. Favorite TV show. Favorite dream. Favorite memory.

I wanted to say, _This one. This memory we’re making together right now is my favorite. Because I know I’ll never ever forget it. Like I’ll never forget you._

The storm stopped eventually and the air was cool. It was twilight and the sky was turning to deep indigo streaked with orange.

I looked up at the sky and raised my hands. “It’s all so damned beautiful.” It would be dark soon and Ari would have to go home and I still hadn’t mustered up the courage to tell him we were moving. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Our tennis shoes,” he said.

“Dad put them in the dryer. Who cares?”

“Yeah, who cares?”

Without thinking, I started walking back in the direction of the pool. The feel of the wet grass and sidewalk under my feet was comforting and familiar. I briefly got the crazy idea that we could scale the fence surrounding the pool and go swimming, even though we didn’t have our swim trunks.

Nice boys like us would never do that. Go skinny dipping in the dark.

I turned around to face Ari and told him we were leaving El Paso.

Ari’s eyes were far away, I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. It was like the words I’d just said were a pebble or stone dropped into a deep dark well, all he heard was the ricochet, the echo.

“We’re moving away from El Paso,” I repeated. “We’re leaving for a year.”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? I mean, when?”

“My dad’s going to be a visiting professor for a year at the University of Chicago. I think they’re interested in hiring him.”

“That’s great,” he said. Great? I felt like he’d just punched me in the gut. But not like before, the sort of good way when I saw him step out the bathroom wearing my clothes, and my skin had got all tight and it hurt to look at him but that didn’t keep from wanting to look at him any less. Now I just felt incredibly sad. I looked away from him.

“Yeah,” I said. What else was there to say? He was fine with me moving. I’d have to find a way to be fine with it, too.

“That’s really great. So when are you leaving?”

“At the end of August.”

He smiled. “That’s great.”

Why was he smiling like that? “You keep saying ‘that’s great.’”

“Well, it is.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Aren’t you sad, that I’m leaving?”

“Why would I be sad?”

I smiled then, too. Because if I didn’t smile then I would start crying and if I started crying I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop.

I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at the empty dark wells of his beautiful eyes. Or the beautiful way the wind was whipping through this hair. Hair I wanted so badly to touch, just once, before I left him, maybe forever.

A hopping motion caught my eye and I saw a bird in the middle of the road. It’s wing was broken. It couldn’t fly.

“He’s going to die,” Ari whispered.

“We can save it.”

I walked to the middle of the street and crouched down as I tried to delicately and gently pick up the injured bird. I cradled its warm body in my hands, felt the rustle of its feathers and the frantic press of its tiny heart against my cupped palms.

I wanted to hear how the words would sound coming out of my mouth, the words I couldn’t tell Ari, so I whispered to the bird, “You make me feel like I belong. Because I belong with you.”

Then: a horrible screeching noise I think for a crazed moment is coming from the bird in my hands. A flash of headlights. My heart rate accelerating from 0 to 90 and a rush of adrenaline jolting through me and pulling me under like I’m getting caught up in a rip tide wave, yet my brain numbly and uncomprehendingly keeping my body rooted in the same crouching position, unmoving, as I realize too slowly that the car headed straight toward me is going much too fast. That it’s not going to stop.

 _I’m going to die_ , I think, just as I hear, from somewhere very far away, Ari calling out my name. Then the slam of his body into mine, the impact wrenching the breath out my ribs. A blast of searing scraping pain in my arm and a cracking thud so loud reverberating inside my skull it makes me want to vomit. I think I do vomit.

And my vision goes black.

When I open my eyes I see that I’m still cradling the bird against my chest, but I’ve crushed the breath from its body. And Ari isn’t moving either.


	23. Saint Gerard

Panic is a living creature, worming its way into every particle of my body. It feels like an insidious beast is boiling a cauldron of dread deep inside the pit of my guts, fear bubbling over and spreading out and up into my throat and down into the twisty caves of my intestines. The cast iron pot of panic is overflowing and bottomless, while the creature keeps stoking the flames.

“Call an ambulance! Get help! These are someone’s kids!”

Then there’s my dad’s voice, shouting. “That’s my son! That’s my boy! Dante! Ari!”

I try to lift my head to tell him _I’m fine, I’m alive_ , but the only words I have room for in my brain are _Ari Ari Ari Ari Ari…What happened to Ari?_   When I speak, the voice I hear is not my voice. It’s much too alien and small and burnt and hysterical to be mine.

"Ari..."

“They’re alive, thank God. Thank God. He’s breathing. Chole, call the ambulance! And the Mendozas! Quickly! Don’t move him!”

Don’t move who? Me? Ari? _I can move_ , I think. But when I try, I find that the concrete is a slippery magnet. The gravel ripped through my skin like it was cheese on a grater. I feel burned, like each pebble is a piece of red hot coal lodged between my muscles and skin. My head is made of cement. My arm cradling the dead bird is numb and on fire at the same time, a jarring combination. I don’t know why it’s so hard to lift my arms or my head.

“Dante, can you hear me? Can you nod your head yes?”

I nod my head against the road.

“What happened to Ari?” the stranger living inside my throat says.

“We need to take you both to the hospital. It’ll be all right, Dante. Here, let go of that.”

I keep clutching the bird until my dad pries it gently out of my fingers.

My father lifts me and holds me in the basin of his arms. Like I’m a little boy. A child’s toy, a bath toy, a plastic boat. Like I’m weightless, like I’d drift down stream if he didn’t hold me so tight.

I wince. “My arm. What happened to Ari?”

“The car...it looks like it ran over his legs. But he’s breathing. He’s alive. The ambulance is on its way.”

My body is convulsing and racked with sobs, full-bodied and so forceful I scare even myself.

“It’s all my fault.”

“Shhh, don’t talk, okay. I need to take you to the hospital. Your mother can ride with Ari in the ambulance. She’s calling his parents.”

“No! I won’t leave him!”

“Shhh, shhh. It’s okay.”

“I’m not leaving him.”

“We won’t leave him, I promise.”

The ambulance comes amazingly fast. Or maybe time stopped the minute Ari was hit and only started back up again once I knew the ambulance was here, that they were going to make him better. _Fix him, please fix him._ My tears make the ambulance’s flashing lights look like red pointed stars. They move Ari onto a stretcher and strap him in. They agree to let me ride with him in the ambulance. I get in with my mother; we sit on a little bench across from Ari and my dad follows us in our car.

My mother prays in Spanish the entire ride over to the hospital. This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. She places one hand on top of Ari’s, the other on mine. The prayers are like poems. I don’t need to know what the words mean to know what they mean. That she is willing to make a bargain to save Ari, just like I am. I shut my eyes and lean against her warm soft body and pray, too, silently.

She tells me not to shut my eyes, not to fall asleep, not until we know if I have a concussion or not.

So I force my eyes open and I look at Ari’s mangled body. My tears are like a waterfall and I look at him as if through a wavering veil of mist. His body has no edges. He’s attached to so many machines. The respirator machine sounds like Darth Vader. I try not to let that scare me. I try to stay strong for him and pray, like my mother.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me, Ari. Please don’t die. He can’t die. God wouldn’t let him die. Stay in the light. Don’t leave me. I’ll do anything, just don’t let him die._

I can’t tell if I’m thinking these things or speaking them aloud.

My mother’s lips work so furiously, it's almost like she’s trying to cast a spell.

_O Saint Gerard, who, like the Savior, loved children so tenderly and by your prayers freed many from disease and even from death; graciously look down upon the distressed parents who plead with thee for their child’s health if such be the Will, of God. Present their promise to God to bring up the child a good Christian and to guard it by word and example against the fatal leprosy of sin. This favor we implore thee, O sainted Brother, through the tender love with which Jesus and Mary blessed thy own innocent childhood. Amen._

That was the prayer she repeated over and over the whole ride over in Spanish. I didn’t know what the words meant, not until I was all stitched up and we were watching the clock in waiting room purgatory after they’d taken Ari in for surgery on his legs. She told me it was Saint Gerard’s Prayer for a Sick Child. While we waited for Ari to get out of surgery, I asked her to teach me Ari’s prayer in Spanish.


	24. Hold

**Hold**

Past rooms with gaping mouths,  
held breath, past patients,  
asleep and hooked into  
machines that drip and beep,  
to the room that holds him.

His room is a dark dank hold  
of a ship that sways and pitches  
every time I look at him.  
_I’m not going anywhere,_ I whisper,  
_I’ll stay with you as long as they’ll let me_.

His mother holds his hand.  
Her cup holds her coffee.  
His father holds back his tears,  
strong shoulders hold up his head,  
but barely. _Keep holding on._

I’m the guilty one, not them,  
I should be held without bail,  
left to rot in jail. I deserve it.  
I’d go gladly, trade his life for mine,  
if he’d only just open his eyes.

I try to hold a meeting with God.  
_They’re not available at the moment.  
Try back another time.  
_ How about tomorrow, then?  
_Don’t hold your breath._

Hold on, this isn’t right. This isn’t fair.  
I’m trying to do the right thing,  
hold myself accountable, make a trade.  
Me for him. I’d do it in a heart’s breath.  
I’ll hold to my promise, I swear it.

Still no reply. So I make a new vow:  
I promise to hold his heart in my heart.  
My heart will be a lighthouse,  
I will hold his light and he will hold mine,  
just please let him find his way home to me.


	25. The Weight of Waiting

I don’t like hospitals. Who in their right mind does? I bet the people who work there don’t even really like it. The smells, for one. The tension that hangs heavy in the air like it’s an anti-air freshener on the rearview mirror of a car but instead of a pine tree it’s shaped like an anatomical heart and smells like blood, vomit, bleach and astringent cleaner, day old coffee, piss and shit, body odor, fear and dread. The awful raw animal sounds people make. The machine sounds that are like a fly buzzing incessantly around your ear: clocks ticking, machines beeping, wheels screeching, TVs and radios bleating in the background. The long corridors and labyrinthine hallways that all look the same. How easy it is to get lost and wind up in the wrong wing, peering into strangers’ most private moments while you’re searching for the one you love.

So yeah, hospitals are terrible. But there was no way I was leaving until I knew Ari was going to be okay after his surgery.

I’d never been in an ICU unit before. I’d been to a regular hospital room when I was younger and my abuelo needed a stent put in for his heart. What I remember most about that is how he let me climb in bed with him and press the button to move the top of his bed up and down and that he gave me his little carton of milk and let me eat some of his cold mashed potatoes. I don’t remember being scared because I don’t really think I understood that he was in real danger, that something could have gone wrong with his surgery and he could have died. My parents left that part out and just said we needed to go see him to help him get better.

This time, I wasn’t a delusional kid who thought me being there would actually help Ari get any better. But I still couldn’t leave, not even to sleep. After I got my stitches and cast on (it turns out I'd broken my right arm when Ari pushed me out of the way of the car), my mom thought I should go home and rest and that the Mendozas would call us once they had news about Ari. But I flat out refused. My parents switched off staying with me while we waited with Ari’s parents. We didn’t talk much. My throat felt as scraped up as my face, all rough and gravel-singed. I thought the second I opened my mouth I’d start to cry so I just sealed it shut and waited.

After Ari’s surgery they let us see him briefly in the ICU unit. I didn’t realize that the ICU was just one big area and that all the beds would be separated only by curtains. He seemed so exposed. Ari was semi-lucent for only a little bit. He said my name but I don’t think he understood that I was right there, standing next to him. It’s hard to explain how scary that was to witness. Maybe scarier than right after the accident and he wasn’t moving. It was like he was there but wasn’t there. I could hope against hope that he would be himself again but I had no way of knowing that for sure. And it would be all my fault if he was permanently damaged. I’d never forgive myself if he didn’t make it out not just _okay_ but not make it out as _Ari_. If he somehow lost a part of himself that made him who he was, made him the person I loved more than just about anyone else on the planet. He moaned, obviously in a lot of pain, and the doctors gave him drugs that made him sleep. And then all we could do was wait for his body to want for him to wake up.

The weight of waiting. It creates its own strange force inside your body. Your head droops and your neck snaps but you can’t really sleep. You can’t turn off your brain but it feels sluggish and dull. Your body aches, but not as much as your heart, which keeps pumping even though it stopped the minute the person you love was dragged away from you.

Time passes strangely in a hospital waiting room. Especially after visiting hours are over and you’re supposed to have gone home. It doesn’t obey the normal laws of reality we’re used to. You know you’re not supposed to be there, there’s no context for why you’re there, why the dawn breaks even though your soul still feels heavy and dark as the night sky.

At some point I needed to get up and stretch my legs so I went looking for the cafeteria vending machines and ended up finding the hospital’s little chapel instead. It was empty and I sat on the wooden benches. My limbs were heavy. I closed my eyes and time and space started behaving strangely again. My head felt like it was a snow globe, with the universe swirling around inside it. I asked the stars for help, to keep Ari safe. I didn’t say any of the Bible words my mom had taught me, but there, alone, was where I really learned what it means to pray.

 

* * *

 

My right arm was broken, which made me feel even stranger and more helpless. I needed my parents to open a bag of chips or crack open the tab of a soda can for me. To pass the time while we waited I practiced writing with my left hand; I wrote my name and Ari’s name over and over on a page of hospital stationary. It looked like a Kindergartener’s chicken scratch. It sort of matched how I felt, though.

Thirty-six hours after he’d gotten out of surgery, Ari’s dad came and found me and told me Ari was awake finally. My dad had gone home to shower and bring me back some real food, so I was alone. Something broke loose inside me when he told me Ari was going to be okay and I sobbed into his arms. He let me get it out of my system. He patted my back and let me cry, but his own face stayed dry. He was so like Ari. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face before going in to see him. I wanted to be strong for him, like he’d been strong for me.

I stepped into his room and saw the brown and white parts of his eyes. They were really truly open! He looked absolutely terrible, but he still managed to smile at me. Relief flooded over me like a tremor.

“Hi,” he said.

“We sort of match,” I said. My arm cast, his leg casts. A mangled matching set.

“I got you beat,” he said. He sounded like talking took a lot of effort.

“Finally, you get to win an argument.”

“Yeah, finally,” he said. “You look like shit.”

“So do you,” I said.

I stepped in closer to his bed but was afraid to touch him. Like touching him would make him hurt even more.

“You sound tired,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you woke up.”

“Yeah, I woke up. But it hurts less when I sleep.”

“You saved my life, Ari.”

“Dante’s hero. Just what I always wanted to be.”

I felt pressure start to build in the back of my throat and behind my eyes but I tried to shove it down. “Don’t do that, Ari. Don’t make fun. You almost got yourself killed.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

I couldn’t help it. Tears started running hot down my face. It wasn’t on purpose. “You pushed me. You pushed me and you saved my life.”

“Looks like I pushed you and beat the crap out of your face.”

I raised a hand reflexively to touch my still sensitive cheek. It still stung like hell. “I’ve got character now.”

“It was that damned bird,” he said. “We can blame it all on the bird. The whole thing.”

“I’m done with birds.”

“No you’re not.”

Once tears get going, they really have a life of their own. Ari was awake, he was making stupid jokes, he was alive, he was Ari, so why couldn’t I stop crying?

“Knock it off,” he said, not meanly. His voice was too tired to have any real oomph behind it. “My mom’s been crying—and even Dad looks like he wants to cry. Rules. I have rules. No crying.”

I thought of Dead Bird Day. If it wasn’t for that day I’m not sure we’d be here right now. That was the day that things started going to hell. And it was all because of stupid birds. I was done with them, even though Ari didn’t believe me.

“Okay,” I said. “No more crying. Boys don’t cry.”

“Boys don’t cry,” he said. “Tears make me really tired.”

It was such an Ari thing to say, I let out a barky laugh that was more like a combination laugh-cry. But since I was done with crying, it was a laugh.

I shut my eyes for a second and the accident replayed in my mind. I heard Ari’s voice like a wind chime saying “ _Why would I be sad?”._ I saw the hail stones, the bird, the headlights, heard Ari screaming my name, smelled blood and asphalt. It all happened slower in my brain than in real life, almost like I was piecing together all the images after the fact, trying to solve the puzzle of how and why this terrible thing had happened. At the time it had happened so fast I barely registered what was happening, why Ari’s body was barreling into mine, but now time had made it obvious. It happened because of me.

“You took a dive like you were in a swimming pool,” I said.

“We don’t have to talk about this.”

“You dove at me, like, I don’t know, like some kind of football player diving at the guy with the ball, and you pushed me out of the way. It all happened so fast and yet, you just, I don’t know, you just knew what to do. Only you could have gotten yourself killed. And all because I’m an idiot, standing in the middle of the road trying to save a stupid bird.”

“You’re breaking the no-crying rule again,” he said. “And birds aren’t stupid.”

“I almost got you killed.”

“You didn’t do anything. You were just being you.”

“No more birds for me.”

“I like birds,” he said.

“I’ve given them up. You saved my life.”

“I told you. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Ari’s parents laughed, so I did, too. I’d almost forgotten they were in the room with us.

Ari smiled, then winced. I hated that. I hated that it hurt for the most beautiful boy on the planet to smile and it was my fault.

I took his hand. I thought he’d wince again but he didn’t.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Ari. Forgive me forgive me.”

His eyelids fluttered closed and he began drifting away. His mom told me it was the morphine. He hummed a little but didn’t talk any more. He kept holding onto my hand until he was fast asleep.

I carefully pried our hands apart even though I knew he was out cold. I brushed his hair out of his eyes. I said good-bye to his parents and went back into the waiting room. My dad was there. I told him Ari had woken up, that the doctors told us he was going to be fine. My dad hugged me and drove me home. I fell asleep during the car ride back to our house, even though it was only a short drive. He must have picked me up and brought me up to my room, because the next thing I remember was waking up in my bed and seeing a bird on my windowsill. I shooed it away, shut the blinds, and went back to sleep.

I dreamed that Ari and I were in a swimming pool. We were both sitting on a big inflatable swan. I was sitting behind him with my arms wrapped around his waist, my head resting on the back of his shoulder. I had big white wings and I wrapped them around us. The pool stretched on forever, it turned into the sky. He asked me if we could fly.

“I don’t know how,” I said. “I’ve never tried.”

“What are those wings for?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just mean, they’ve always just been here. I don’t know what they’re for or if they even work.”

“Well, that’s stupid. Let’s try them.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be a chicken.”

“I’m not a chicken. I’m a swan.”

We both laughed. I was hugging him so tight I could feel all the vibrations run through his body. It hurt to laugh, though. 

“What a waste," he said.

I hugged his waist even tighter and brushed my cheek against his skin in the dip between his shoulder blades.

“Here, have one.” I yanked the right wing out. It slipped out pretty easily and stung only as bad as pulling out a splinter. I pulled the other one out. He held them out to his sides and tried flapping them up and down.

“Now what?” he said.

“Now what what?”

“Nothing’s happening.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought this through.”

“I guess not.”

“I could try sticking them into your back.”

“Won’t that hurt?”

“Maybe. But I don’t know what else to do.”

“Okay, try it.”

I took one of the wings from him. The end was pointed like an old-fashioned feather pen. I jabbed it into his skin.

“Ouch!”

A trickle of blood rivered down his back.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said.

“Can you give me a tattoo instead?”

“What do you want the tattoo to be?”

“Draw me some wings.”

My right arm was numb. I couldn’t hold the wing anymore with it, let alone draw. “I can’t write with my left hand. It will turn out terrible.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will. Tattoos are permanent.”

“I won’t. Just try.”

I used my left hand and drew blood wings on his back with the feather quill pen/wing.

“It’s all red. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“It hurts a lot. But I don’t care.”

“You’re so strong.”

He snorted.

“Let’s go for a swim in the sky.”

He sprouted wings where I’d scratched them into his skin. We switched spots so now he was positioned behind me; he held me tight around my rib cage and we lifted off. My ears popped painfully.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re migrating.”

“But where?”

“Anywhere you like.”

“But I like it here.”

“We can’t stay here, you know that, Dante, right?”

“Why?”

“Because here is nowhere.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t cry, Dante.”

“I’m not crying.”

“I can taste it on your cheek.”

I had forgotten our cheeks were rubbing so close together.

“Don’t let go of me,” I said.

“I won’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For hurting you.”

“The wings didn’t hurt.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

The air way up in the sky was frigid. The wind stung my eyes and made my face itch. But my whole body was throbbing and on fire from where he was touching me and from the rhythmic beating of his wings.

“I like this so much.”

“Don’t cry, Dante.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“It feels like we’re swimming in a pool up here. We’re weightless.”

“Will you wait for me?”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for us.”

I was shouting so he could hear me over the wind.

“What would I be waiting for?”

“Nothing. Put me down please. Let me go.”

“I’m not doing that.”

I hated him so much.

“Let me go!”

“Fine.”

I felt the release of the pressure of his arms around my waist. I fell and fell and woke up right before I crashed into the ground. Everything hurt.


	26. Yes Rules and No Rules

I didn’t leave the house for three days after we got back from the hospital. I barely left my bed, if I’m being honest. Sleeping seemed like a good idea, but I only slept in fits and starts because my arm itched something wicked and the cast smelled funny (an odd mix of polyurethane, plaster and a weird unidentifiable cheesy smell) and my head felt like it was stuffed with gauze and I had nightmares. So I just stayed in bed and played my Beatles records over and over (I’ve never been able to listen to ‘The Long and Winding Road’ since then without thinking about the accident). I listened to sad songs and looked at my busted up face in the mirror for a long time. But it wasn’t my face anymore. Boy Dante had become Sad Automaton Zombie With Two Mean Purple Shiners Dante. But being a zombie was still better than being dead, right? So I added feeling guilty about feeling lousy—instead of grateful for each second I was still on the planet and safe at home while Ari was stuck in the hospital—to my ever-increasing guilt pile.

Once Ari woke up, it really hit me that he could have actually died because of me. I didn’t deserve a friend like him, someone as brave as him. I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to truly thank him for saving my life. But I didn’t want to visit him in the hospital for some reason. So I felt guilty about that, too. (The guilt pile was getting big enough that I’d be able to chop it up like firewood and start a big old guilt bonfire).

Having a useless right arm really screwed with my sense of normalcy and equilibrium for those first few days. It took forever to do the most mundane things like getting dressed (so why bother changing out of my pajamas?), squirting toothpaste on a toothbrush (just mouthwash would be fine), eating anything that required both a knife and fork (ice cream or cereal would have to do). Taking a shower was a whole production of trying to cover my cast up with a trash bag so I took baths instead. And even then I could barely wash my left armpit! Forget drawing or painting for the rest of the summer. Forget swimming. Forget writing. Forget playing guitar. So I just holed up in my room and replayed the accident over and over in my brain.

My parents were worried and checked up on me a lot, but they let me be for the most part and let me stay in my room. I told them I was fine, that I was just tired, but that was not really the truth and I think they knew it. I didn’t want to leave the house because I didn’t want strangers looking at me, looking at my two black eyes and my cast, and assuming things about why I’d gotten to be that way. Assuming that I’d got my ass kicked. Assuming that I was the type of person who was easy to break, easy to knock around and push down.

I was, though. Easy to push down. Ari had pushed me out the way of the car. Knocked me over like I was a bowling pin. When the car was coming straight at me, I hadn’t been able to move. I didn’t understand it: why had my body betrayed me like that? Why had my ancestors handed me the short end of the stick when it came to possessing actual survival instincts? What’s that all about, Charles Darwin?

I was ready to fully accept my new lifestyle as a zombie teenager hermit/recluse when my dad asked me if I was up for helping him with weeding the garden. Since I was officially off of lawn mower duty for the rest of the summer (silver lining to almost dying?) he needed an extra hand with the rest of the chores.

“I’m an invalid, Dad, remember? And anyway, why does it matter? We’re leaving this house for a whole year, who cares if there’s weeds?”

“Well we haven’t left yet. And one of my TAs is going to live here while we’re gone and will take care of maintenance things for us. Is that what’s been bothering you, Dante? That we’re leaving?”

“Who cares if it’s bothering me? You and Mom already made the decision for us to move, didn’t you? What does it matter what I think?”

“It’s okay for you to be angry with us, you know.”

“I’m not angry at you, ok?” I shouted (definitely not angrily).

“Is there something else that’s bothering you, then? Something about the accident?”

“I don’t really feel like talking about it right now, okay, Dad?” I hated the quiver in my voice.

“That’s fine. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. But I do need some help with the garden.”

“I’m not sure how much of a help I’ll be.”

“We’ll figure out someway to make you useful.”

I have to admit being outside in the fresh air felt good after so many days in my dark room. It was nice to feel the grass between my toes, feel the sunlight warm my skin. Dad mowed and I weeded and watered. Then we refilled all the bird feeders. Despite what I’d told Ari at the hospital about being done with birds, I was still glad they visited our yard. It would have been oddly quiet without them. Dad and I didn’t talk much but that was okay. After, he made us lunch and I ate a big bowl of ice cream for desert (his idea). Then we played scrabble and checkers for a few hours until my mom got home. My dad and mom told me they were going to visit Ari at the hospital and asked if I wanted to come. I lied and said I was too tired and I wanted to take a nap.

After their visit, while we were eating dinner, my mom told me she wanted me to talk to a counselor about the accident and the move and whatever else was on my mind. She said she understood that there were probably things I wanted to talk about, but just not with her or Dad, and that was totally fine and valid. But she didn’t like to see me closing myself off like this. It wouldn’t help me heal.

I agreed to go. Because she had that look of fierce love in her eyes that I couldn’t refuse. And because I knew she was right. As much as I wished I could be like Ari, it just wasn’t in me to keep things locked inside. It hurt more than it helped.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, I called Ari in his hospital room.

“Sorry I haven’t gone to see you,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not really in the mood to talk to people.”

“Me neither. Did my mom and dad tire you out?”

“No. They’re nice.”

“My mom says I have to go to a counselor.”

“Yeah, she said something like that.”

“Are you gonna go?” The idea of Ari talking to a counselor seemed as plausible as El Paso getting a blizzard in July, but I had to ask anyway.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

“Your mom and my mom, they talked.”

“Bet they did. So are you gonna go?”

“When Mom thinks something is a good idea, there’s no escape. It’s best to go along quietly.”

He laughed, which made me happier than I’d been all week. “How’s your face?” he asked.

“I like staring at it.”

“You’re really weird. Maybe it is a good idea for you to see a counselor.” I laughed and my cheeks felt rusty, like I was the Tin Woodsman pre-WD40. Probably because it was my first real laugh in days. I imagined Ari in his hospital bed, with his three casts and hooked up to all the machines, laughing and then wincing in pain. The smile evaporated off my face.

“Does it still hurt a lot, Ari?”

“I don’t know. It’s as if my legs own me. I can’t think about anything else. I just want to yank the casts off and shit, I don’t know.”

His words hit me like they were the car that barreled over his legs.

“It’s all my fault.”

“Listen,” he said as I wiped my eyes. I was glad we were talking on the phone and not in person so Ari wouldn’t see me dissolving again. But knowing him, he could probably tell already what was happening. “Can we have some rules here?”

“Rules? More rules. You mean like the no-crying rule?”

“Exactly.”

“Did they take you off the morphine?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just in a bad mood.”

“This isn’t about my mood. It’s about rules. I don’t know what the big deal is—you love rules.”

“I hate rules.” That wasn’t exactly true. “I like to break them mostly.”

“No, Dante, you like to make your own rules. So long as the rules are yours, you like them.”

Wow, Ari really had my number, didn’t he? The thought made me both happy and a little ticked off, truth be told. But mostly happy that he knew well enough to call me out on my half-truths.

“Oh, so now you’re analyzing me?”

“See, you don’t have to see a counselor. You have me.”

“I’ll tell my mom.”

“Let me know what she says.” I could hear the smile in his voice from over the phone. And that made me smile, too. “Look, Dante, I just want to say that we have some rules here.”

“Post-op rules?”

“You can call them that if you want.”

“What are the rules?”

“Rule number one: We don’t talk about the accident. Not ever. Rule number two: Stop saying thank you. Rule number three: This whole thing is not your fault. Rule number four: Let’s just move on.”

Rule number five: Stop my heart from exploding with gratitude every minute of every day because my best friend was alive and I hadn’t accidentally got him killed. Sounded as easy as “stop breathing”.

“I’m not sure I like the rules, Ari.”

“Take it up with your counselor. But those are the rules.”

“You sound like you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

I knew if I ever wanted things to get back to normal between Ari and I, I’d need to go along with him on this. “Okay,” I said. “We won’t ever talk about the accident. It’s a stupid rule, but okay. And can I just say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time? And can I say ‘thank you’ one more time?”

“You just did. No more, okay?”

“Are you rolling your eyes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, no more.”

 

* * *

 

We chatted for a little while longer but Ari had to get off the phone so some nurses could take his vitals or run tests or whatever they needed to do to him, so we hung up. I decided enough was enough with my self-imposed house arrest. I told my dad I was going to take the bus over to see Ari after lunch.

“Are you sure?” Dad said. “Mom can drive you over when she gets off work. Visiting hours are until eight.”

“I can take the bus, Dad. Ari and I do it all the time.”

“I’d just feel more comfortable if Mom or I drove you.”

“Dad, I’ll be fine. The law of averages says it’s highly unlikely I’ll almost get killed in a traffic accident more than once in a week time span.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“Okay, sorry, Dad. I want to go early so Ari doesn’t get too tired, okay? And I’d like to go by myself.”

Dad looked at me, worry splashed all over his face, but he must have seen the determination in my expression and he softened.

“Do you have bus fare?”

“Yes.”

“And a bus map?”

I suppressed an eye roll. “Yes.”

“Okay, be careful.”

“I will.”

“I’m glad you’re going to see Ari. He’ll be happy to see you.”

“Yeah, well, they just took him off morphine so I don’t know how happy he’s gonna be.”

“You’ll find a way to cheer him up. You always do.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I love you, Dante.”

“Love you, too.”

 

* * *

 

I went up to my room to start the arduous task of washing myself and putting actual non-pajamas clothes on for the first time in days. I took a bath—my cast hand clunking over the side of the bathtub—and thought about Ari’s rules.

I realized the main difference between what Ari liked about rules and what I did. For Ari, rules dictated what we _couldn’t_ do. No talking about the accident. No saying sorry. No feeling guilty. No dwelling. It was like describing playing soccer as: No using your hands to whack a ball around a field of grass. That didn’t get you very far, did it? Didn’t really paint a full picture of the nuances of the game. For nuance, you needed yes rules as well as no rules. Okay, so Ari said I couldn’t _say_ thank you anymore, but there were other ways I could show him how thankful I was, right? That wouldn’t break his rules. Nuance. I just needed to figure out how to show him.

I dried myself off and looked at my naked body in the mirror. My face still had half the color spectrum of ROY G BIV painted all over it: pink welts, red scabs and a smattering of purplish bruises taking on a yellow-greenish tinge. I was still leery of what people on the bus would think when they saw me but I was determined to go. I had nothing to be ashamed of.

I tried putting on a pair of jeans but after several minutes of aggravation and one-handed fiddling with the top button I abandoned the jeans and opted for sweatpants instead. Ari wouldn’t care, anyway.

I looked around my room for things I could bring Ari to cheer him up. His room was already full of flowers and get-well cards. No point in writing him a card if I wasn’t allowed to say thank you anymore and he’d probably get all weird if I showed up with a bouquet of flowers or a stuffed animal or any of those well-meaning but impersonal things you can pick up at the hospital gift store.

I picked out a few books for him, hefty ones, not like the compact books of poetry we usually read together.  _War and Peace_ and _The Grapes of Wrath_. Not exactly pick-me-up/feel-good summer beach reads. But I figured he had nothing but time while he waited for his body to heal so he might as well dive into some broody Classics.

I flipped through my writing journal, seeing if there were any poems I’d written I could share with him, but I knew that would make him embarrassed. Me, too.

I figured the easiest way to show him how much he meant to me was to literally show him. I got my sketchpad out, the one I’d used to draw Ari in his room. I hardly ever showed anyone my sketches, not even my parents unless they really asked. But I wanted to show him. I hoped he’d see what I saw when I looked at him and sketched him: someone worth savoring each moment with, someone worth capturing each tiny detail of his eyes and lips and hair and smile. Someone worth being thankful for that he’s alive and breathing. Someone brave and selfless and kind and funny (and grumpy, sarcastic, deadpan and mono-syllabic when it comes to expressing emotions, but that’s part of what I liked about him, too). Someone worth loving.

I tore out a drawing of Ari at the pool I’d done from memory and a few more that I didn’t want him to see. There were also a few drawings of my parents and several self-portraits that I kept in. There was a drawing of a bird who’d landed on my windowsill that I considered tearing out but I decided against it. Ari knew I wasn’t actually done with them.


	27. Aurora

Paying a bus fare shouldn’t be the most challenging thing you have to complete in a day. But throw a broken arm into the mix and suddenly the whole world is an obstacle course called Formerly Trivial Tasks That Are Now As Daunting As Olympic Qualifiers.

I got on the bus, fished out a handful of coins from my pocket and tried to feed each coin one by one into the fare taker using just my thumb and pointer finger. Big mistake, since I’m apparently not as dexterous with my palm as fifteen years on the planet had led me to believe. The rest of the coins practically jumped out of my fist and scattered all over the bus floor, spinning noisily. I scrambled to pick them up, cursing under my breath, feeling my face flush from all the eyes I’m sure were boring into me. The passengers waiting to board barreled ahead of me and a man reached down to help me pick up the coins.

“It’s all right, I’ll get these,” the man said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right, just take a seat. I got this, sonny.”

“Ok, thanks.”

I handed him the coins I’d picked off the ground. The bus driver had already grown impatient and started driving away as the man paid the fare for me.

Normally I would have beelined it to the very back of the bus, where Ari and I normally sat, but I felt like I needed to stick around and thank the stranger again.

He sat down next to me and handed me back my spare change. "Thanks for your help,” I said.

“No problem, kid.” He looked me up and down. “What the hell happened to you, anyway?”

The man’s voice was a gritty foghorn. Like he’d been smoking cigarettes rolled with sandpaper since he was eleven. I was taken aback a little but I didn’t detect anything malicious behind his question, mostly curiosity.

“Traffic accident. I almost got hit by a car.”

“Well at least you’re alive to tell the tale. Where was the accident?”

“Over by Memorial Pool.”

“You like to swim?”

“Yeah.”

“Swimming’s good exercise. Just make sure you don’t accidentally drink any of that pool water though. You don’t know what sorts of bad stuff the government’s been pumping in there on top of all the germs and chlorine and kiddie piss. You could end up with tapeworm that eats your brain. Or worse.”

At this point I probably should have smiled and nodded and left it at that. Maybe pulled out a book so he would get the hint that I wasn’t in a chatty mood. But I took a look into the man’s face. He was probably in his forties but looked much older. His skin was weatherworn, cracked and brown like a creek bed during a drought. His eyes were startlingly blue beneath his bushy caterpillar eyebrows. His gray hair was thin, long and straggly and he had crumbs in his beard. He was missing a few teeth and his breath was wet and rank. Part of me wanted to recoil away from him. But he’d been kind to help me. I didn’t want to turn my back on him just because he gave off a definite oddball vibe and a not-so-great smell.

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. You think waterborne diseases just happen naturally? Part of God’s plan? No sir. ‘Don’t drink the water.’ Ever. Ya feel me?”

“I thought that mostly applied to travel in foreign countries? Since your body hasn’t acclimated to the native microbes in the water?”

“Native microbes! Native to what? Native to this spinning piece of dirt we call planet earth? Because I’ve got news for you there, too. They’ve been pumping stuff into the water for hundreds of years. And there ain’t no such thing as native. Ever hear of Aurora, Texas?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’ve heard of Roswell, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Aurora happened way before that but you never hear about it. I wonder why. Year is 1897. An April morning just like any other. Dawn breaks and a one Mr. Judge Proctor wakes up on account of a horrible crashing noise. Nearly has a heart attack. Thinks the world’s ending or war has broken out. Jumps out of bed, grabs his gun and tells his family to stay inside and lock all the doors. Looks across his field and sees his windmill's on fire. Alerts the fire brigade, grabs buckets of water to put out the blaze and runs over to the windmill. There he gets the shock of his life. What do you think he sees?”

He looked at me with his wide excited eyes, waiting for me to take a guess. I could tell where his story was going, but I was totally drawn into his tale and wanted to hear him finish it.

“Um…had something crashed into his windmill?”

He slapped his knee so hard it made me jump. “You’re a smart one! What does he see but the crash remains of an extraterrestrial airship. But he doesn’t know that yet. All he sees is wood debris and heaps of metal and smoke. The windmill’s water tank is busted and spewing water everywhere, which is at least lucky since it helps put off the fire from spreading. Proctor and his men are running around, trying to keep the fire from taking out his entire field and what do you suppose he finds hidden under a piece of blasted metal?”

“Um…the pilot?”

“Damn right the pilot! Poor fellow was dead of course. Charred and burned like a piece of barbeque. But even all burnt up the townsfolk knew he wasn’t from this world. They found papers on him, all written in mumbo jumbo like you find in Egpyt and the Mayan temples. Except this wasn’t like any of those hieroglyphics anyone had ever seen before. Scientists and G-men got on the scene right quick. The ship’s metal was like nothing found on this planet either. What do you think happened next?”

“Um…did they take the pilot and the ship to study it?”

“You’d think. You’d think that when one of our brothers makes contact the scientists and whatnot would want to find out as much they can about what makes them such evolved superior beings. But humans are greedy bastards. And cowards. So instead of sending it in to be studied, they tried to hush the damn thing up. They buried the pilot and stuffed the remains of his ship down a sealed well. No follow-up, no nothing. Thing is, before the crash strange things kept happening in Aurora. Boll weevil infestations wiped out cotton crops. Fever sickness spread so the whole town was under quarantine. Fires took out half the town. No one realizing that what they tried to cover up could have helped the town if they’d only listened and tried to understand the pilot’s mission. Instead the water made everyone sicker.”

“But why would they have covered it up?”

“The government needs to keep us stupid and sick and compliant. Pigs in a pen. Ignorant to The Truth. We’re all pawns in their big game. Let me tell you something, kid. Everything you see, this bus, the bus driver, the road, that 7-Eleven. It’s all an illusion. You see it because that’s what they want you to see. But once you’ve got your eyes open. Once you’ve seen and felt and talked to our brothers you’ll understand that they’re just trying to help us. They’re trying to spring us from this prison. The government tries to keep our brothers a secret so ‘the public doesn’t panic’. What a crock of horsehit. It really comes down to keeping us at war and keeping us down while they get rich on oil money and military money and Big Pharma money. Our brothers have the technology and abilities to end global hunger and sickness and poverty. But that would hand over the government’s power to the people. And the filthy warmongers want to keep us down. Pigs in a pen. Once you’ve seen that, you can’t unsee it.”

I really didn’t know what else to say to that besides, “Ah.” I wondered what Ari would have thought of this man if he were sitting here next to me. He’d probably think he was a total whackjob and would have been skeptical of everything that came out of his mouth. But I couldn’t help but sort of liking the man, with his wide overly bright eyes and emphatic gestures.

“ _’There are more things between heaven and hell than any of us have witnessed._ ’ Except some of us have witnessed it.”

“You mean you’ve seen aliens?”

“I got my first visit when I was probably your age. Maybe a little younger. I was fourteen.”

“I’m fifteen.”

“Yeah, just about your age then.”

“What happened?”

“I was living in foster care at the time. Hated it. The family I’d been placed with was a bunch mean sadistic motherfuckers, all of them. Pardon my French. Wanted to kill myself. Tried to. But I didn’t because that’s when the brothers found me. Put their suckers on me and dipped my head in a silver liquid like I was being baptized. After that, they could talk to me in their language through my brain and I understood it. Even though to your average person it would sound like whale noises. High pitched squeals and clicks. But they could talk to me after that and I didn’t want to die anymore. I ran away from the family I was with and I’ve been on my own ever since. But not alone. The brothers let me know their plans sometimes. I’m lucky they trust me.”

“Wow.”

“They have plans. They’re trying to help. Here in El Paso, the ones who escaped from Roswell have been working on taking over the transportation system. But our metal is toxic to them. Their skin is so delicate. The fumes, too.”

“And you’re helping them?”

“When I can, yeah. Not so much for the transportation thing, that’s not really my area, but I’m their man on the inside for Big Pharma intel. I get terrible headaches from the suckers after they’ve mined me for knowledge. But that’s okay because afterwards I feel so much freer, more alive than ever. It’s an honor to help them. That’s why I’m headed to the clinic now. They need me.”

“I’m going to the hospital to see a friend of mine. He was also in the accident except his legs are broken.”

“I broke both my legs once. Motorcycle accident. Hit and run. I was left for dead on the side of the road. I would have died right there in a ditch if the brothers hadn’t found me and helped heal me up.”

“Wow. You’ve um…had quite an interesting life.”

“Interesting ain’t the half of it. Here’s my stop. Good luck, kid. Keep your eyes open.”

“Sure, yeah. I will.”

The man got off and hobbled off the bus. Something was definitely wrong with his legs, they were bent inwards toward each other at an off angle. I couldn’t help but imagine him on the side of the road after his motorcycle accident, getting healed by an otherworldly blue light, even though I knew it was impossible.

* * *

 

I kept thinking about the strange man until the bus arrived at my stop. I wanted to write down the story he’d told me so I could remember it and maybe make a painting out of it, but I wasn’t good enough with my left hand to write more than a few chicken scratch lines. _Aurora. Contaminated Water. Pig pens. The truth._ The list looked a little crazy. I tore the page out of my sketch book and stuffed it in my pocket.

I went up to Ari’s room at the hospital. My stomach cramped a little bit when I saw him in his bed, alone, staring out the window that overlooked a parking lot. He looked a little better than when I’d seen him the day he woke up, but not by much. I couldn’t help but imagine him motionless in the middle of the road.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “The doctor said I was going to heal very nicely.”

“Very nicely?”

“That’s exactly what he said. So give me eight to ten or twelve weeks, and I’m going to be myself again. Not that being myself is such a great thing.”

That made me laugh. At least the car hadn’t knocked Ari’s self-deprecating humor out of him. But then I felt kind of bad for laughing. Hospitals really didn’t seem like the type of place for belly laughs. “Are you going to initiate a no-laughing rule?”

“Laughing is always good. Laughing works.”

“Good,” I said, relieved. If Ari and I couldn’t laugh together after what happened my heart would have well and truly broken.

I pulled up a chair next to his bed and took the books I’d brought out of my backpack. “I brought you reading material. _The Grapes of Wrath_ and _War and Peace_.”

“Great,” he said. He didn’t sound overly enthused about the new summer reading syllabus I’d provided him.

“I could have brought you more flowers.” Every spare surface of the room was covered in get-well flowers. All the floral bouquets that would have been nice-smelling on their own combined to make a not-so-appealing mishmash of scents. But at least it covered up the underlying chalky hospital smell.

“I hate flowers.”

“Somehow I guessed that.”

He flipped through _War and Peace_ in a desultory way. “They’re fucking long.”

“That’s the point.”

“Guess I have time.”

“Exactly.”

“So you’ve read them?”

“’Course I have.”

“’Course you have.”

I put the books on the little table next to his bed, next to a stack of get-well cards. My mom and dad had given him one and asked me if I’d wanted to sign it. I’d said no. There was no way I could have distilled all my feelings of regret and guilt and gratitude to him and written them out next to a few trite lines thought up by some random person who worked for Hallmark. But now I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten him a card. Everyone likes cards when they’re sick. Even Ari.

I took out my sketch pad. Another bout of nervous butterflies in my stomach, but I tried not to let it show.

“You’re going to sketch me in casts?”

Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have. Not unless he wanted a sketch of himself that looked like the handiwork of a preschooler.

“Nope. I just thought that maybe you’d want to look at some of my sketches.”

“Okay,” he said. He sounded about as excited at looking at my drawings as undergoing another round of surgery. I tried not to let that hurt my feelings.

“Don’t get too excited.”

“It’s not that. The pain comes and goes.”

“Does it hurt right now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you taking anything?”

“I’m trying not to. I hate the way whatever the hell they give me makes me feel.”

He pushed the button to move his bed more into a sitting position. I handed over the sketch pad and he was about to open it up when I stopped him, suddenly too embarrassed to let him look at them with me right there next to him.

“You can look at it after I leave.”

He looked at me, not sure what to say.

“You have rules. I have rules too.”

He laughed at that and only winced a little bit.

“Tell me about the people on the bus,” he said.

That I was happy to do. I told him about the strange man and the aliens he’d encountered. I wanted to tell the story right. Not like I was making fun of the man or thought he was totally crazy, which I’m pretty certain he was to some extent. But I wanted Ari to understand the spell the man’s words had cast on me. How this man’s ranting didn’t seem so scary or weird because he believed in a power that was good, a power that wanted to help us humans even if we didn’t deserve it. But I must not have been doing a very good job of telling the story because Ari’s eyes were unfocused and drifting the whole time. He’d have to have been there, I guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a busy September with work but hope to get back to a more regular posting schedule in October! <3


	28. Eggshells

Later that night after I got back from the hospital, I was alone in my room listening to The Association on vinyl, trying not to think about the far away look in Ari’s eyes after I’d given him my sketchbook, when I got a shiver of goosebumps down my right arm and felt an ache in my chest like someone was tightening a belt around my ribcage. I rubbed the spot where Ari had slammed into me to push me out of harm’s way and thought _“This is what the hailstorm feels like”._  Then seconds later I heard a low rumble of thunder and the _plit plit plit_ of rain against my window that meant a sudden summer storm. I thought of my abuela, who claimed she could predict the weather based on the stiffness in her knees. I’d never really believed her but now I wasn’t so sure. Would I be like her now? An arm and chest based weather forecaster? How else had the accident changed me?

It was the first storm since the accident and my heart thrashed like the wind tearing through the tree branches right outside my window. I felt a jolt of panic and my first instinct was to curl up on my bed, pull the covers over my head and wait for the storm to pass. So I did. But once I was under the blankets, I felt too hot and closed in; my breath in the tight space was too musty and sticky and I felt small and spineless, like a child hiding from monsters under the bed, hoping they’d just go away on their own. I didn’t want to hide. I wanted to be brave like Ari. So I did the opposite. I opened my window and stuck my head out into the rain. I liked how it felt, so I turned around and leaned backwards outside as far out as I could manage while bracing my weight against the windowsill and keeping my cast arm dry. I leaned back and opened my eyes. Raindrops whizzed straight at me like a cascade of clear bullets; it was almost like I could see each one in slow motion. I scrunched up my eyes and stuck out my tongue. The rain was cold and prickly in my mouth, but I liked it. My hair quickly got drenched and I shook it out like a dog. I felt each rattle of thunder and crack of lightning tremor through my body. I wanted to scream into the storm, but I didn’t want my parents to hear me and get alarmed. So I whispered instead.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

I was crying but it didn’t matter because the rain washed it away.

“I love you I love you I love you I love you.”

It felt good to stay the words, to hear them coming out of my mouth, even if it hurt at the same time. Even though the thunder swallowed them up.

I stayed like that, leaning back halfway out the window, for a long time. I'm not sure how long. But I had a crick in my neck by the time the storm ended and I withdrew back into my room. Maybe it was all the blood that had rushed to my head, but I felt exhilarated. I was shivering but felt better and more alive than I had since the accident.

I took a long hot bath (with bubbles, which I hadn’t done since I was little kid). I don’t know why, but in the bath I touched myself and for the first time didn’t get embarrassed or self-conscious about it. I thought about what it would be like to kiss someone. (All right, what it would be like to kiss a _boy)_. To feel a boy put his hands on me. The bath was warm and safe, not suffocating like under my blankets. I thought about being able to swim again. I thought of kissing a boy in a big clear lake in the moonlight. The sensation that began building up inside as I touched myself was almost painful. I thought I should stop, that I wasn’t doing it right. But the tight, pressing almost-pain still felt good so I kept going. I thought of the desert on a perfectly clear night with no light pollution, all the stars swirling above me, me being _in_ the stars now, surrounded by them, buoyed by them, hurtling through space. And then I saw a glimpse of dark, serious eyes staring into mine, stars reflecting in those eyes, and I felt lips and hands all over my slick skin. I expanded out and out and out. I felt a rush like I was there as a witness at the dawn of creation and I contained the whole universe inside me.

I felt a little weird after. Emptied. My muscles felt happy-melty like I’d just swam an hour of laps. Bone achingly tired, but in a good way. I put on my PJs and told my parents I was going to bed, kissing them both good night. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

* * *

I dreamed Ari and I were alone at the pool. My arm was healed and I could swim, but Ari couldn’t go into the water because of his casts. He was still in his hospital bed and we rolled it—still attached to the IV drip and monitors and other medical equipment—up close to the edge of the pool like it was a beach chair. He had a big stack of books on his bed, but whenever I picked one up to read to him the words got all jumbled like they were sliding around the page.

“That means you’re dreaming,” Ari told me. “If words and numbers get all weird like that it means you’re in a dream. I read about it.”

“This isn’t a dream. I think I would know.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’m already in my suit,” I said, pointing at my trunks, and we both laughed.

“I wish I could get in the water. These damn itchy casts are driving me crazy. It’s all I can think about.”

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Scratch me?”

“Scratch you?”

“Yeah, you know, like how dogs like to be scratched on their bellies. Scratch me. It’ll make me feel better.”

I reached down into Ari’s casts and scratched his legs for him. I reached up under his hospital gown and dragged my fingernails all over his stomach and chest. He sighed happily and my insides crumpled like a balled-up piece of paper. I was embarrassed and had to pull my hand away from him.

“I have a better idea. Let me take these casts off for you,” I said.

“I know you’re smart, Dante, but since when did you become a licensed medical professional?”

I snorted. “You’re the one who just said I was dreaming. So I can take your casts off if I want to, can’t I? Since I’m calling the shots here.”

“Okay, let’s see what you can do.”

I tried yanking them off him like a big sock but they wouldn’t budge.

“Ow! Are you trying to dislodge my hip from the socket?”

“Sorry, sorry.”

I tried tearing them in half but the plaster was too hard. 

“Don’t they usually saw them off? Where’s a saw when you need one?”

My dream brain stubbornly refused to produce a saw.

“Ok, I have one last idea,” I said. I gently rocked Ari’s legs back and forth like I was peeling a hard-boiled egg. Hairline cracks formed and little by little I chipped away at the casts. Once I was done, his legs were still covered in bits of dust and plaster like eggshells. Globs of white gunk were lodged under my fingernails.

“Let's go in the water and clean you up,” I said.

I helped ease him into the water, since his legs were shaky from disuse. He floated on his back and his hospital gown billowed up around him in the water. My face grew hot and I averted my eyes as I ran my hands up and down his legs, cleaning the cast remnants off. The same tight feeling began building up inside me as when I’d had my bubble bath, and that’s when I woke up with a jolting spasm.

My room was still dark with a hint of pre-dawn blue, which was disorienting. I was shivering and sticky and drenched in sweat. Something was really wrong. I sat up in bed and was hit by a wave of dizziness. I thought it would be a good idea to go downstairs and stick my head in the freezer. I made it to the kitchen and grabbed an ice pack. I laid down on the kitchen floor, liking how the cool tile felt against my burning skin. I took off my shirt and put the ice pack on my chest, the same spot where I’d felt the incoming rainstorm earlier, and must have fallen back asleep right there because that’s where my dad found me in the morning.


	29. Fever Dreams

I’m on the bus. A man sits down next to me. His features are simultaneously clumpy and weirdly smooth, like he’s made of melted plastic or silly putty. He has no nose, just a cavity in the middle of his face. The bus smells like gasoline. I gag. I keep pulling the lever to let the bus driver know I need to get off, but he ignores me.

The man puts his hand on my knee. “Don’t worry, I’m just like you,” he says.

He’s an alien. So is the bus driver. The certainty of this hits me with a slap of icy dread.

“Heading home?” he asks me.

I nod. He laughs.

“You already are. Home is here,” he says, tightening his grip on my leg.

I’m panicking. I need to get off the bus, away from the alien with the burnt plastic face. I smash through the rear doors, rolling onto the street straight into incoming traffic. I’m in the middle of a highway. I wake up just as a truck slams into me and runs over my legs.

Awake now, my mom is sitting next to me on the bed. She’s taking my temperature. Her face is a knot of worry. She places a cold compress on my forehead. I clench and unclench my leg muscles. Relief washes over me, followed by a stab of nauseous guilt. _Ari’s broken legs._ _Ari not moving in the middle of the street. Ari almost dead because of me._ I don’t know whether I’m crying or sweating. I try to let go of the panic of the dream but my eyes keep leaking. I’m definitely crying. My throat burns. I remember my dad helping me up from the kitchen floor and that I’m sick with a cold or something but I know I'm crying too much for this to be a normal summer cold.

“Mom? What’s wrong with me?”

“Shhh, it’s okay honey. You’ve got a fever. Take these. Drink the whole thing.” She hands me two pills and a big glass of water. It hurts to swallow.

“I feel funny.”

“If your fever doesn’t break soon we’ll take you to the doctor. But just keep resting, okay? I made you some raspberry ginger tea.”

“With honey and lemon?”

“Of course.”

“Why aren’t you at work?”

“I took the morning off, just in case. Do you want some toast?”

“Not hungry.”

“Okay. Keep drinking tea and water and keep sleeping. I’ll check up on you in an hour. I’ll make some soup if you can keep it down.”

She kisses my forehead.

I’m in a city. It’s raining. People float down the street in colorful boats that are actually upside-down umbrellas. Everyone waves and smiles at me. _We got the day off because of the flood. Isn’t that great? No more work!_ I’m holding onto a lamppost, watching the water rise and rise. Animals in pairs drift by on swimming pool rafts and floaties, even the water animals like dolphins and sharks and seals. (They took the day off, too). I don’t want to let go of the lamppost but have no choice as the water rises and fills up my mouth, ears and nose. I drift on my back, shivering. The water is cold and murky. I want to go home.

My dad is next to me on the bed now.

“You awake now, Dante?”

I nod but I’m not 100% sure I’m awake actually.

“How are you feeling?”

“Keep having weird dreams.”

“Mom thinks it’s the flu. Or maybe your body is still recovering from the accident.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s chicken soup. It’s on the side table there if you get hungry. Drink this water. And there’s more tea.”

He puts the back of his hand on my forehead and frowns.

“You still feel too hot for my liking. Are you nauseous? Dizzy?”

“Just tired. My bones feel like they’re made of sand bags.” I shiver.

“Are you cold? Need another blanket?”

I shake my head. “Gonna keep sleeping.”

“Okay.”

He stands up to go. I don’t want him to leave.

“Actually, Dad? Can you read to me a little? It’ll help me fall asleep.”

“Sure thing. What do you want me to read?”

“Anything.”

He picks up a book off the stack on my desk.

“You’ve been reading Pablo Neruda?” he asks.

I nod.

“ _—‘I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life’ —”_

I’m drawing a scene in front of me I see out a window: a hilly island surrounded by a lake and sky. In the center of the hill I draw two V’s, like the way children draw birds. They’re actually eyes. The hill is a face. The face of a boy with black hair made out of dark tree branches, blowing in the wind. The boy shakes out his hair and the whole island erupts in birds. Seagulls. I draw them furiously all over the paper until the whole thing is scratched over with black Vs.

I drift in and out as my father reads poetry to me. I feel comforted, the way I used to when he’d sing me to sleep when I was a little boy and we'd make up silly rhymes together.

Fever. Flu. Flew. Fly.  
Sparrow. Sky. Shhh. Shy.  
Sleep. Dream. Give. Take.  
Kiss. Kill. Shiver. Shake.

The fever flew.  
The sparrow knew.  
The boy was shy.  
And he loves you. 

I hear my father's voice. I wonder when my voice will sound like his. As low and calm and confident. My voice shakes too much. 

“— _’I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,_  
_I love you directly without problems or pride:_  
_I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,_  
_except in this form in which I am not nor are you,_  
_so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,_  
_so close that your eyes close with my dreams_ ’—”

I’m in a dark room, an attic or garret. Snow is falling inside the room, like I’m inside a snow globe. It’s cold but not too cold, so I think maybe it’s not snow after all but something else. Maybe magic. Or dust. Or dandelion puffs. Or ash. Or cherry blossoms. Maybe pollen. Maybe confectioners’ sugar. It’s hard to tell because the room is dark, illuminated only by pools of bluish light. I have a camera and am taking Polaroid photographs of my bare feet. I hear a creak and a trap door opens in the floor. Ari sticks his head up.

“There you are,” he says.

“Here I am,” I say.

“Have you ever seen snow like this before?” he asks.

“I’ve never seen snow period.”

“Me neither.”

We smile at each other and stick out our tongues, catching the maybe-snowflakes. “It’s not as cold as I thought it would be,” he says. “And it tastes like honeysuckles.”

“I’m shivering," I say.

Het gets up and wraps his arms around me from behind. I take a deep breath into the softness of his neck.

“I have a secret,” I whisper.

“Don’t tell me.”

“Okay, I won’t. Can I take your picture instead?”

He hesitates. Then nods. I find the perfect spot for him to stand in the blue light. He doesn’t smile when I take the photo. I don’t ask him to.


	30. 'Between the shadow and the soul'

I woke up panicked and drenched in sweat from yet another nightmare. In the dream I’d been walking on a railroad track and got my leg stuck between the wood slats in a sinkhole of pebbles. I saw a train approaching in the distance and tried to pull my leg out but it was like a cement block encased my leg and it wouldn’t budge an inch. Across the tracks, Ari saw me and came running toward me to help, only he didn’t realize the middle rail was deadly. I called his name over and over and screamed at him to stay away from the electric rail but the approaching train’s whistle overpowered my voice. He couldn’t hear me and my warning came too late.

Awake and shivering, I tried to shake off the residual fear coursing through me. I looked down at my legs, which were tingly and numb, but thankfully, still intact. I shook them out and turned over only to see my dad sitting in my comfy reading chair, with a book in his lap, dozing. The small reading light by the chair was still on and the dim blue light in my room told me it was early morning.

“Dad?” I croaked.

He woke up with a twitch and adjusted his glasses, which had fallen skewed across the bridge of his nose while he slept. “Oh, Dante. You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Better I think. You fell asleep in here?”

“I heard you crying out a bit in your sleep. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. Then I got caught up in reading these poems again and must have dozed off.” The book in his lap was the same Pablo Neruda one he’d read aloud to me the day before.

“What was I saying? In my sleep?”

“Just mumbling for the most part. And Ari’s name. You sounded scared.”

“Oh.”

“Do you remember what happened in your dream?”

“No, not really,” I lied. My face was already flushed but I felt it get even hotter. I knew he meant well, looking after me, but it almost felt like he’d been spying on me or like I was a baby he needed to watch over.

“Do you need anything? Tea? Breakfast? You barely ate anything but a few crackers and toast yesterday.”

I was surprised to find I was hungry, ravenous even.

“I’m starving, actually.”

“Good, that’s a good sign.” He touched my forehead. “It feels like your fever broke, thank God. I’ll warm up some oatmeal and take your temperature just to be sure we don’t have to take you to the doctor.”

“What time is it? Is it too early to call Ari?”

“It’s only 6:00am. How about you wait until after breakfast?”

“Sure, of course.”

“You sure you don’t want to talk about your dream? Was it about the accident?”

“Sort of. I’ve been having weird dreams a lot. Sometimes there’s an accident, sometimes not. But I don’t really remember them that well.”

“How’s your throat feeling?”

“Hoarse. But better than yesterday I think. It doesn’t feel like I’m swallowing a fire ball any more each time I take a breath.”

“Well that’s good, too. Here, take some more of this cough syrup.”

“Blech, it tastes so terrible.”

“I know. Just down it fast and drink this water right after.”

“You’d think in this advanced day and age of modern medical technology they’d have come up with something other than disgusting cherry poison flavor. Maybe I should forget astronomy and dedicate my career to inventing cough medicine that doesn’t taste like liquid death.”

My dad chuckled. “Well I can tell you must be feeling better if you’re planning to overthrow the cough medicine establishment. Yesterday you just drank it without a word. Now _that_ got me nervous.”

I pinched my nose, drank the cough medicine as fast as I could and washed it down with a big glass of water. But the artificial flavor still lingered in my mouth.

“Uch, so gross. Can I break the no pop before dinner rule and have some ginger ale?”

“As long as we don’t tell your mother, I think some ginger ale for breakfast would be fine.”

“I’ll go down with you and help with the oatmeal.” I sat up in bed and a wave of dizziness crashed over me. “Oh boy. Maybe I’m not feeling so much better after all.”

“Dizzy?”

“Yeah.”

“Headache?”

“No, not really.”

“Nauseous?”

“No.”

“Okay, it’s probably just a head rush since you’ve been lying down for so long. You just stay in bed and I’ll bring breakfast up to you. K?”

“Okay, thanks, Dad.”

He leaned down to kiss my forehead and I hugged him tighter than I thought I was going to.

“Love you, Dante. I’m glad you’re feeling better today. You gave your mother and I quite a scare.”

“Love you too.”

“You know you can talk to us about anything, right?”

“I know.”

“Okay, good. I’ll be back up in a few.”

After breakfast I called Ari. I knew it was still early, but after my slew of disturbing dreams I couldn’t wait any longer to hear his voice. When he picked up with a groggy “hello?” I couldn’t help the relief that spread through my chest, releasing a tight knot I’d been holding onto for what felt like days.

“Morning,” I said.

“Dante? What’re you, my alarm clock?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d beat the early shift nurses and get the pleasure of your morning crankiness.”

“You sound weird. What’s wrong with your voice? Allergies again?”

“Nah, I got sick after I came to visit you. That’s why I didn’t call or anything yesterday. Got the flu I think.”

“Ugh, I hate the flu. The flu can wither up and die.”

“Agreed.”

“Night sweats?”

“Yeah.”

“Fever?”

“Yup.”

“Nasty sore throat?”

“You betcha.”

“Well you don’t sound like you’re about to keel over and die on the spot, so I’m cautiously optimistic you’ll survive.”

“Gee thanks.”

We both laughed. It felt good.

“How ‘bout you? How’re you feeling today?”

“Is it technically even day yet? It’s practically still dark out!”

“Listen, farmers wake up before dawn all the time. I’m trying to help you build a little character.”

“Yeah, just what I needed, a best friend slash rooster to wake me up at the butt crack of dawn every day.”

We both laughed again and I knew he wasn’t actually annoyed at me for calling so early.

“Did anything happen yesterday while I was in flu hell?”

He sighed. “They let me try out a pair of crutches but it was an epic failure. Looks like me and Fidel are going to get to be really good friends over the next six to eight weeks.”

“Fidel?”

“Oh, that’s what I’m naming my wheelchair.”

“You’re such a weirdo, you know that?”

“But that’s what you like about me.”

“Are you naming your casts too, then?”

“Yeah. Left leg is Che and right leg is Mao.”

“You’re sort of obsessed with communists. I’m a little concerned.”

“I feel like they’re a misunderstood bunch.”

“Just like you?”

“Just like me.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to name my cast too, then. I christen it Emma Goldman The Anarchist Arm Cast.”

“Excellent choice. And in honor of the books you brought me, I’ll name my arm cast Napolean.”

“Let’s just hope our arms and legs don’t try and overthrow our whole bodies.”

“I already feel like my legs are doing that. I’m about to write the Itch Manifesto. It’s like the Itch-olutionary War over here.”

“Ari’s Tale of Two Leg Casts: _It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”_

“This is for sure the worst of times. Definitely worst.” We both laughed, but I still felt a stab of guilt and had to bite back another apology that I knew was against his post-op rules.

We chatted until his nurses came in. I felt better after our phone call and thought I might be feeling up to visiting him but my mom didn’t think it would be a good idea in case I gave him my flu germs while he was recuperating and healing. I was secretly relieved when she said this. It’s not that I didn’t want to see him. I did. And didn’t. Because seeing him all laid up was really hard; joking on the phone was easier. And in person I didn’t trust myself to not blurt out the words to him that were bubbling up dangerously inside me. The words that I was afraid would change everything between us.

The thing is, realizing that you are hopelessly in love with your best friend is dizzying and terrifying and makes you feel a little foolish at the same time. Like you’ve reached the end of a Scooby-Doo episode when the big plot twist happens, _and what a surprise_ , the unmasking moment reveals none other than the person who was right in front of your nose the whole time. So you smack your head and say “I knew it!” or “That was so obvious! How did I miss the clues?” and laugh at your ability to let yourself be so thoroughly duped.

 _Realize_ is not even the right word, because if you are being really honest with yourself, you knew the whole time but shoved the whole ‘desperately in love thing’ under the rug, couldn’t stare it in the face. _Accept_ is maybe a better word, but it carries with it the weight of concession or contractual formality, such as:

_These are the terms and conditions you must accept to move forward with a life spent loving your best friend (who happens to be boy, but that’s a whole other set of clauses and bylaws we’ll just gloss over for now)._

_Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the School of Unrequited Love! Tuition may be paid in full heartache and/or fruitless daydreams about your best friend’s lips, eyes, hands, hair and other untouchable body parts._

_Please accept me as I am._

_Accept_ feels like such a small word, so full of compromise and acquiescence, when love feels the opposite. True love is boundless. Infinite. Yours for the taking, all you need to do is ask.

And the other problem with _accept_ is that you can _un-accept_ things, too. And imagining a life where I screwed everything up between Ari and I because I couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut? Where I said the wrong thing and lost my best friend? That was unacceptable. So best to tamp it down, keep it hidden, leave everything unspoken, right? That’s what Ari would do.

The problem was, I wasn’t Ari. And once I got it in my head that I wanted to tell Ari I loved him (not that I was _in love_ with him, mind you—that part was still sealed in the secret vault) it was all I could think about. I wanted so badly to say it because _not_ saying it felt wrong. Stingy. Especially after he’d saved my life for goodness sake! I told my parents I loved them all the time. Saying “I love you” to them was as easy as saying hello or good-bye or what’s for dinner. I wanted it to be that easy with Ari. But I knew I was kidding myself. Nothing about being in love with Ari was going to be easy.

The flu laid me up for a few more days. I lost track of how many. I mostly slept. My dreams were a nightmarish jumble of storms, sadness, dead birds, broken legs, aliens, car accidents. In some dreams Ari would get hit by a car or bus or train and I’d cradle his body in my arms, crying enough tears to cause a flood that swept us both away. In other dreams, I’d be the one who was hit, but I usually woke up right at the moment of impact with a racing pulse and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Except for the dreams where Ari’s body would find mine and we’d hold hands or press into each other impossibly close. Those dreams weren’t nightmares but I’d wake up with a knot in my gut just the same.

To pass the time when I wasn’t sleeping, my dad and I read poems aloud to each other. We were still working through 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda. Dad read each one in Spanish and then in English and we talked about how the differences in the two languages affected the rhyme, rhythm, nuance and meaning in each poem.

I was analyzing Sonnet XVII. “This is the part I don’t understand," I said. "He says: _‘I love you as certain dark things are to be loved / in secret, between the shadow and the soul._ ’ But then a few lines later he says: _‘I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride.’_ How can you love someone in secret and straightforwardly at the same time?”

“Those two things don’t necessarily cancel each other out. There could be a reason why a love affair has to be kept secret. Safety or societal expectations, for example. It wouldn’t diminish the feelings they have for each other.”

“But you wouldn’t want your love to be kept secret forever, would you?”

“No. But declarations of love don’t have to splashy, written in the sky by an airplane, for them to be meaningful and true. When he says, ' _I love you as the plant that never blooms/ but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers'_ —it’s going against the convention of traditional love poems like Shakespeare’s ' _Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?'_ , where external virtues are praised, like the color, shape, and smell of a flower and a lover. Here all that is hidden away, the flower has not yet blossomed or might never blossom. But that doesn’t make their love any less real. If anything, it deepens it beyond the artificial.”

“But what about the secret part? Isn’t that like lying? To feel all these things for someone and not be able to share it with them?”

“Well, maybe he’s saying not that their love is kept a secret, but he feels love deeply in a place that is dark and invisible and secret, in the soul. And even if love is hidden deep inside you, you still know it’s there, don’t you?”

“Yes, but who wants to keep all that feeling bottled up inside?”

“Well, not me.”

“Me neither.”

I liked talking with my dad about poetry. It was easier than talking about the accident or Ari or the move to Chicago. Or what would happen if I ever told him and Mom _my_ secret.

“Who said ‘I love you’ first, you or Mom?” I asked.

“I did.”

“I thought so.”

“Did she say she loved you back?”

“She did. But even if she didn’t I would still have known how much she cared for me.”

“How?”

“Well, you know how in grad school we both had study carrels in the library and that’s where we met? Well, I got in the habit of leaving notes and poems for her at her desk. And she would leave an orange or a chocolate bar. In her way, that was her giving me a poem.”

“So you’re saying actions speak louder than words?”

“Sometimes. It depends on the person though. For some people, love is expressed through words and physical touch, for others it’s shown in action and doing kind, caring things. There’s no wrong or right answer.”

Later that day, bolstered by the talk with my dad, I called up Ari at the hospital, determined to tell him three simple words. I just wanted to get it out of my system, just once, and then we wouldn’t ever have to speak about it ever again. My heart was racing as the phone rang and I told myself to stop being a chicken and just blurt it out before we got sidetracked by our typical jokey-chitchat.

“I want to say something to you, Ari.”

“Okay,” he said.

The words lodged themselves in my throat, refusing to budge.

This was a terrible idea. This would ruin everything. I only had one month left with Ari before our move and if I said it, I knew it would just make the rest of the summer more awkward and confusing than it already was since the accident.

“What?” he said again.

“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I wish we could swim again.”

“Me too,” he said.


	31. Oscar Ramirez

I got over the flu but it left behind a restless drawn-tight feeling inside me that I couldn’t shake. I went to visit Ari every day but other than that I didn’t leave my room much. My mom finally insisted on scheduling an appointment for me to see one of her counselor colleagues, Oscar Ramirez. I didn’t fight her too hard on it. I knew it was probably a good idea to talk someone. Oscar worked for the same shelter/halfway house my mom did in addition to having an off-site office. I’d met a few of her colleagues before but never Oscar, which made the idea of talking to him easier somehow.

Ari had been released from the hospital for about a week and a half by the time I went to talk to Oscar for the first time. I’d been going over to Ari’s house every day to visit him. Sometimes we’d go for “walk and rolls” around the neighborhood but mostly we hung out in his room. I decided to read _The Sun Also Rises_ aloud to him (mostly because Hemingway’s sparse, terse writing style reminded me of Ari, but I didn’t tell him that). I read a chapter or two each visit and we’d talk about it after. One time we talked about where we’d go if we decided to become dissolute ex-patriots like the characters in the novel and travel the world together. I wanted to go to Paris; Ari wanted to go to Iceland or Norway. When I asked him why, he said he was sick of the Texas heat and wanted to see the Northern Lights.

“I bet there’s no light pollution up there,” he said.

“Sure, no light pollution, but the winter’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

He snorted. “I wouldn’t mind the cold.”

“How do you know? You’ve lived in Texas your whole life.”

“It snows here sometimes, you know. Like two Christmases ago.”

“I know, but El Paso winter is nothing like up there. We’d need to bring special snowsuits and camping gear or risk dying of hypothermia.”

“It’d be worth it though. To go somewhere so remote and cold and quiet.”

“Sounds like you really want to go on vacation to The Fortress of Solitude.”

“Hey, don’t knock The Fortress. A man needs a place where he can be alone and think.”

“And freeze his face and nuts off in the process.”

“That’s just the price you pay to stop everyone being all up in your business all the time. And anyway, Superman is impervious to frost bite. And don’t talk about Superman’s nuts. That’s sacrilegious.”

“I wasn’t talking about Superman’s nuts specifically. Just frozen nuts in general.”

“Okay okay enough with the nuts talk. Jesus.”

“What? They’re just a body part. No weirder than pinky toes or noses.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever," he said and rubbed his eyes and face. "Hey I’m pretty wiped…so…I might take a nap or something.”

Ari’s face was flushed he looked sort of agitated so I cut my visit short after that. I could tell something was off between us but I didn’t try to press him. Sometimes when I went to visit I wasn’t even sure if he wanted me there. I figured he had every reason to be resentful of me. It was my fault he was stuck at home for the rest of the summer, at the mercy of his painfully itchy and useless legs. I was afraid more than anything that he’d want to stop being friends with me if I needled him too much or asked him what was wrong. So it was easier to talk about books or imaginary plans to travel the world together than what I actually wanted to talk about, which was how badly I was going to miss him when we moved and how sorry I still was about the accident.

When the time came for my appointment with the counselor, I was nervous even though I knew seeking counseling was a totally normal thing to do. Nothing to be ashamed of.

“Do I have to lay down on a couch?” I asked my mom on the car ride over.

She smiled. “Of course not. That’s the sort of thing you really only see in movies nowadays.”

“Good, because that part always seemed a little weird. Do I have to analyze my dreams?”

“Only if you want to.”

“What if I run out of things to say and we just stare at each other in awkward silence the whole time?”

“You’ve never had a particular problem with maintaining conversation, Dante. You can talk to him about whatever you want. Or not talk. No pressure.”

What I really wanted to ask her was if she thought the accident had messed me up somehow, or worse, messed Ari up, and that’s the real reason she wanted me to talk to a counselor. Not physically messed us up. But if I’d caused something to get broken inside us. I had no issue with the field of psychiatry in general, seeing as it was my mother’s profession, but I didn’t like the idea of a stranger realizing there was something wrong with me that needed fixing.

Oscar had an office in the El Paso Child and Teen Guidance Center, which was located in a shopping center. That sort of surprised me. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t the totally mundane looking storefront hiding in plain sight next to a hair salon, pet store and a travel agency. Oscar greeted us at the reception desk, where he kissed my mom on the cheek and shook my hand.

Oscar was around my parents’ age. He was on the stocky side, but not fat or anything. He was the type of solid build that you could describe as equally fitting for a linebacker and a big teddy bear. He had a round, friendly face and close cut salt-and-pepper black hair that didn’t do much to make his appearance less boyish and wholesome. He had a firm handshake and big hands.

“Dante, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your mom has told me a lot about you.”

“Thanks, you too. I mean, nice to meet you, too.”

After my mom checked me in and filled out some paperwork, she left me with Oscar and told me she’d be waiting for me in the reception area.

Oscar’s office was bright and decorated with colorful furniture, throw rugs and artwork, which also surprised me. In my mind I’d pictured something much more stuffy and clinical. To one side of the room was a small couch and an armchair, both plush and comfy looking; between them was a coffee table with a box of Kleenex on it, which I was determined I would not have to use come hell or high water. On the other side of the room was a kid-sized table and chairs plus art supplies and toy boxes, set up like a mini preschool. Seeing the kid stuff made me feel strange. A little sad for the kids who needed to come in here. The office also had a desk, several bookshelves, and a beverage station. Overall it felt more like a living room than an office.

Oscar gestured toward the couch. “Please, take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. Do you want some water? Tea?”

“I’m okay.”

Oscar sat down in the armchair across from me. “So, Dante. Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know that even though your mother and I are colleagues and she let me know a little bit about why she wanted you to come see me today, I want you to feel like this is a safe space to share anything that’s on your mind with the understanding that I take your trust and confidentiality seriously.”

“Even though I’m a minor and you’re legally allowed to tell my parents what we discuss?” I asked. I’d done my research about confidentiality ahead of time. More than the accident I wanted to talk about what it meant that I loved my best friend who was a boy, but I’d decided already to keep that part of me sealed in the vault no matter what. I couldn’t be 100% sure he wouldn’t tell my parents about that.

Oscar smiled. “You are definitely Soledad’s son. Yes, you’re absolutely correct. Even though you’re a minor I would breach confidentiality only if I was worried for your personal safety or the safety of others or in the rare instance that my notes were subpoenaed by a court order.”

“Wow, that would be pretty badass.”

Oscar raised an eyebrow but was still grinning. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Sure, yeah. I was just joking. Discussion of client confidentiality protocol: check.”

It was a relief to hear him say he wasn’t going to tell my parents everything we talked about, but I still wasn’t quite ready to dive right into the accident.

“I like your office,” I said, stalling. I pointed to the kids’ area. “Do you work with a lot of children?”

“A fair number.”

“Do you do art therapy with them?”

“Sometimes. It depends on the child.”

“I’ve read all about the field of art therapy. I think it’s fascinating. If I don’t become a professional artist I might become an art therapist.”

“Would you like to do any drawing right now? We could start with some art exercises if you’re not in the mood to talk at the moment.”

“No, that’s okay. It’s hard for me to draw because of my broken arm. I’m a right-y. But thanks for offering.”

“So you’re okay to talk?”

I nodded.

“I’m glad. So, I understand from your mother that you and a friend of yours were involved in a car accident about three weeks ago and she’s concerned you haven’t been quite yourself since. That you’ve been having nightmares and seem much more withdrawn than usual. Do you want to talk about the accident? Or about what’s been on your mind?”

“So she already told you what happened?”

“Briefly. But I’d like to hear it from you, if you feel comfortable talking about it.”

“Well, it'd been raining and I went out into the street and didn’t see a car coming.” For some reason I didn’t want to tell him about the injured bird I’d seen. “Ari pushed me out of the way of the car and broke both his legs and his arm. He could have died but he didn’t.”

“Ari is your friend?”

“Yeah, my best friend.”

“How is he handling everything?”

“Um. Ok. I dunno. He can be kind of hard to read sometimes. They recently let him out of the hospital. He’s stuck in casts for the rest of the summer because of me.”

“And how have you felt since the accident?”

“I think my mom is worried that I’m showing signs of anxiety, depression and PTSD and that’s why they want me to talk to you. But I don’t have PTSD.”

“No?”

“No. I looked it up in the DSM-IV.” I ticked each symptom off with my fingers. “I’m not having recurring flashbacks or panic attacks. I’m not avoiding cars or the street. I’m not having angry outbursts. Well, I’m still kind of pissed at my parents about deciding to move to Chicago but that’s a different thing. Yeah, my dreams have been a little weird and I’m not sleeping great but that’s because my arm cast is so annoying. So I think we can safely say I don’t have PTSD. Possibly a little low-level anxiety. But I do deep breaths if I start feeling weird.”

“I don’t want to rule anything out just yet, but I’m happy to hear you’re listening to your body and your emotions. What do you mean when you say you start feeling weird?”

“I guess…sad. Stomach crampy. Frustrated. I think I’m worried about Ari. About how he’s recovering. About not being able to help him when we move.”

“It sounds to me like you might blame yourself for what happened to Ari.”

“Well, yeah, because it was my fault.”

“Who said it was your fault?”

“No one _said_ it was my fault. But it obviously was.”

“Why do you feel that way?”

“It’s not feelings, it’s the facts. I went out to the street, I wasn’t paying attention and Ari got hurt because I was stupid and off in my own little world instead of paying attention to the road. And the thing about Ari is, he doesn’t like it when I’m upset, so he only let me apologize once and then he said we’re not allowed to talk about the accident anymore. He has some kind of stoic boy code about it. He wants to pretend it never happened.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Well, I don’t think we should, you know, _dwell_ on it or anything. But I want him to know how sorry I am that I almost got him killed and ruined the rest of his summer.”

“Did Ari say anything like that to you? That you ruined his summer?”

“No. But he’s not big on talking anyway. But, like I said before, it’s a fact. Now he’s stuck in a wheelchair until his legs heal and he can’t do anything except hang around his house and read books and I know he’s pissed about it even if he won’t say anything.”

“Has he ever expressed anger or regret about what he did? That he saved your life?”

“No. Nothing like that. He’s just been moody and sullen. I mean, he’s been in a lot of pain so I don’t blame him for being crabby. I just don’t want him to hate me.”

“Why do you think he would hate you? It seems to me to be quite the opposite, that he cares about you very much. Do you want to tell me about him? How did you two become friends?”

“We met at the pool. I offered to give him swimming lessons. Because he didn’t know how to swim properly.”

“You like to swim?”

“Almost more than anything. Well, I like swimming, reading, drawing, stargazing and hanging out with Ari pretty much equally.” I lifted my cast arm and pulled a face. “Now my life is pretty much limited to reading and hanging out with Ari and teaching myself to become ambidextrous. Not that I’m complaining. I mean, I’m lucky to be alive. I know it’s babyish but I miss swimming with him. I wish I could retcon the whole day of the accident.”

“Retcon?”

“Oh that’s a comic book thing. Basically when the writers change things retroactively in a story to make up for continuity errors. Sort of like a big do-over. Usually that sort of thing bugs the heck out of me because it seems so lazy. But I get the appeal now. Like you have God’s big eraser.”

“It’s natural to wish you could change the past so easily. But it’s equally important to learn how to move forward. And to not beat yourself up over something you can’t change.”

I shrugged and picked at my cast. “I just keep thinking that if it had been Ari in the middle of the road, I wouldn’t have been able to save him. I wouldn’t have been fast or strong enough. He was like Superman, the way he dove at me and pushed me out of the way.”

“Why do you think you wouldn’t have been able to help him if your roles were reversed?”

“Because when I saw the car coming, I just froze.”

“That could have been your body experiencing a fight or flight reaction. And also Ari saw the car coming whereas you did not, yes? So he had more time to think and react.”

“But still, I don’t think I could ever be as brave as he was.”

“You may be underestimating yourself and your strength. It sounds to me like you’re beating yourself up about a theoretical past as well as construing what actually happened to place all the blame on yourself. Just imagine what the people driving the car must have felt like. They most likely felt guilt as well. But motor accidents happen so quickly, in a blink of an eye, that it’s not helpful to play the blame game after the fact, particularly if it’s determined that the driver wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol and the accident was just that: an accident. I would advise you to try not to blame yourself for the actions of others. And if that’s difficult, you may want to ask yourself, what am I getting out of continuing to blame myself for something that was out of my control?”

I didn’t quite know what to say to that.

He must have seen my confusion so he rephrased his question. “In other words, are you holding onto feelings of guilt and shame because you don’t think you’re worthy of having a friend who cares about you enough to put his own life in danger to save yours?”

I didn’t think I was worthy of it. But thinking about that made me start to feel like I might cry, which I had been determined not to do, so I clamped down and said nothing for awhile.

After a bit of silence Oscar said, “You know, I never read comics but my daughter loves them.”

“Really? Which ones? _Betty and Veronica_?”

“Actually _The X-Men_ is her favorite. She loves all the Saturday morning cartoons based on comics, too.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve.”

“And she doesn’t think _X-Men_ is too scary?”

“Well, she’s always been a tough little cookie. Never was into any of the princess stuff. Except She-Ra Princess of Power. She adores She-Ra.”

“She-Ra is pretty rad.”

“Do you have a favorite comic?”

“Ari teases me about it, but I really like _Archie_. He thinks they’re lame. Which, sure, yeah, they can be pretty cheesy. But I don’t like the really dark comics.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no rule that says you have to like all the same things your friends do.”

“Believe me I know that. I know I’m a little weird.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s not a secret or anything. Ari’s the first guy I’ve met my age who really gets me. I’ve never really had a best friend like him before. Not since we moved to El Paso anyway. I had a best friend in California but that was already years ago. We hardly see each other or write letters anymore.”

“And you’re worried that the accident and the move to Chicago will have a negative impact on your friendship with Ari? That you’ll lose touch and stop being friends? And you blame yourself for this future you see happening?”

I nodded, hoping to dislodge the traitorous lump that was forming in my throat.

“You’ve told me Ari hasn’t expressed anger or regret to you about the accident. It sounds to me like he values you and your friendship very much. He values you enough to have put himself at risk when he saw you were in danger. This doesn’t sound to me like a fair weather friend. And there are many ways to stay in touch. You can write letters and talk on the phone.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“I’d like to circle back to what you said at the start, about you being insistent about not having PTSD.”

“Okay…”

“It’s important to remember that everyone reacts to stress and trauma differently. You have in fact experienced a traumatic event. Your life and the life of your best friend was put in danger. For many people, acute stages of trauma may occur two to four weeks after the event itself. So it’s totally normal for your life and mental health to take some time settle back into place. You’re allowed to feel frustrated, angry, worried, scared and whatever other emotions might arise. It’s important to not rush to judge or ignore your feelings. You’ve mentioned that Ari isn’t talkative when it comes to expressing emotions, which is valid and what he needs right now to process the accident. But for you, I get the sense that you have a lot you’d like to express, either verbally or visually. Would journaling or drawing about the accident help you move forward?”

“Maybe…I usually keep a journal but I haven’t been able to write or draw much with my broken arm. When I draw with my left hand it’s like I’m in preschool again.”

“As I’m sure you know, artists express emotions in non-figurative ways all the time. If I asked you to express your feelings about the accident in abstract visual form and not worry how it looks compared to your other drawings, would that be a helpful thing to do?”

“Maybe. It still might look like chicken scratch.”

“Nothing wrong with that. If you feel more comfortable creating a collage we can try that instead.”

"I'd like to try to draw I think."

Oscar got out some paper and colored pencils and markers and charcoals for me. Instead of sitting at the kiddie table he let me sit at his desk to work. The first thing he had me do was draw how thinking about the accident made me feel.

Without really thinking about it, I picked up a black charcoal and started drawing the injured bird in the middle of the road. I used heavy black strokes. It was frustrating at first to not have complete control of the charcoal like I usually did but just putting marks and lines on the paper felt okay. But the drawing still left me with a hollow feeling.

“This is what I saw,” I told Oscar. “I saw an injured bird in the road and I went to pick it up and that’s why I didn’t see the car coming. I think I killed it. The bird.”

“And this makes you sad?”

“Yeah. I wanted to save it. But it still got killed. And Ari got hurt. It was stupid of me. I should have seen the car coming.”

“Is there anything you can do to this drawing now to make you feel less sad about it?”

“When I first saw the bird, it was on the road. But then I picked it up and held it close to my chest.”

I drew a hand around the bird, but it still didn’t feel right. Too stark and bleak. Not how I remembered the bird at all.

“The bird had colors on it. But I can’t really remember what they were exactly.”

“It’s your bird now, Dante. You can add whatever colors to it you want.”

I remembered the made-up birds I used to draw when I was little: the rainbow rocketbird, the tawny tailblaster. Pages and pages of sketchbooks filled with imaginary creatures. I hadn’t judged myself then about how anatomically accurate they were or how technically proficient I was. I drew and created because it felt good. Right now my drawing didn’t make me feel good so I added colors to my bird’s wings and I turned the hand into a nest. That felt better.

I felt calmer after my drawing was finished. But something still bothered me.

“Do you think me changing the drawing of the bird is like retconning the accident?” I asked. “I mean, when I started, I thought I would draw the bird like I remembered it. But that made me feel terrible to picture it all stiff and dark and lifeless. I wanted to protect it. Now it looks more like it’s asleep than it’s dead. But that’s not what actually happened.”

“If drawing the bird like this helped you reframe your sadness and anger into something beautiful, then I think it’s a good thing.”

“It’s not cheating?”

“No, I don’t think it’s cheating at all. In fact, I think it’s more like forgiving.”

“Forgiving who?”

“Yourself.”


	32. Rainbow Bird (charcoal and colored pencil, drawn by left hand)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Apologies for the long time between updates. I knew I wanted to write a scene with a counselor but wanted to make sure it was properly researched first and handled with care. I really hope to make more frequent updates now. Thanks to everyone who has left a kudo or a nice comment, it means so much!


	33. The Gift

I ended up going back once a week to talk with Oscar until the end of summer. We talked about a lot of things: school, my parents, not feeling like I fit in with the rest of my family, the upcoming move to Chicago, my interest in art and astronomy, and my friendship with Ari. We talked a lot about Ari. He would probably have been embarrassed by the amount I talked about him to Oscar, but I enjoyed it. It made me feel connected to Ari even when his distant and sad moods continued through July and August.

I never told Oscar that I loved Ari in so many words. I was too embarrassed and afraid to say it out loud, even to someone I ended up trusting as much as Oscar. But Oscar and I talked about what it meant to love someone, in general terms. How people express it differently. Knowing that talking about feelings had as much appeal to Ari as eating a plate of slugs, I wondered if there was a way I could let him know how much he meant to me in actions not words. I visited him every day, but it still didn’t seem like enough. Oscar wondered if there was anything I could do to help Ari’s mom with looking after him. I wasn’t sure but I decided to talk with Ari’s mom about it.

She was at her normal place at the kitchen table when I popped my head in after I’d left Ari in his room one day.

“Hi Mrs. Mendoza. Do you have a second?”

“Of course. Everything ok with Ari?”

“Yeah, we were just reading and he got a little tired so I’m gonna head home. I was just wondering…um…well, do you need help with anything? With Ari, I mean? I’d like to help if I can.”

“Well, I think you already help him a lot, Dante. I know Ari can be a bit…monosyllabic…but you must know how much you coming over and visiting him means to him. You’re like his rock, you know?”

I wasn’t sure why my cheeks felt so hot all of a sudden.

“I don’t know about all that,” I hedged. “I just meant…is there anything I can do to help _you_ help Ari? You’ve probably got lots of prep work to get ready for the school year to start and now that he’s stuck in his casts I’m sure it’s a lot of extra work. I just mean, I feel bad about the accident and I wish there was more I could do to help him. And you.”

“Well, I get him in and out of his wheelchair from bed and take him to his doctors appointments and help with some bathroom logistics and getting dressed, but none of that’s really appropriate for you to do. I also give him a sponge bath and shave every morning.”

I remembered one of the dreams I’d had while I was sick with the flu—where I’d helped Ari into the pool while he was still in his hospital gown and I’d cracked his casts apart like eggshells and washed him clean. I wasn’t sure Ari actually would let me wash him, but it was something I knew I wanted to try.

“Do you think that’s something I could help with? Would Ari mind? How do you give him a sponge bath exactly?” I was struck with an image of Ari in the bathtub that made my cheeks burn even redder. “He’s not naked, right?”

She laughed, but not meanly. Probably because she saw how terrified I probably looked. “No, we have a whole system. He wears his trunks or shorts, don’t worry. He usually stays in his wheelchair but the hospital did give us a little stool for the bathtub we use sometimes. I fill up a bucket with warm soapy water and use a washcloth to clean him and another one to dry him off. Sort of like doing the dishes,” she chuckled.

“And shaving? You’re not afraid of nicking him?”

“He’s gotten good at staying still.”

“So you think I could do all that?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’d like to help you. Is tomorrow ok?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, thanks Mrs. Mendoza.”

“See you tomorrow, Dante.”

The next morning I got to Ari’s house right after breakfast. I was still unsure how Ari would react when I told him what I wanted to do. But I was determined to try.

“So, I was thinking this morning I’d help with your sponge bath. Is it okay?” I asked.

“Well, it’s kind of my mom’s job,” he said. His voice sort of sounded like he'd just swallowed a bug.

“She said it was okay.”

“You asked her?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” he said. “Still, it’s really her job.”

“Your dad? He never bathed you?”

“No.”

“Shaved you?”

“No. I don’t want him to.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

I wanted to tell him so many things then. That it made me feel good making sure he was taken care of and happy. That I wouldn’t mind if it was my job to look after him. That it would be an honor to have him trust me again, a gift. Instead I said, “I won’t hurt you. Let me.”

A moment passed in silence and then Ari said okay. I could hardly believe it actually. My heart started firing off in quick hummingbird bursts but I tried to stay really calm. I rolled him into the bathroom and helped him out of his tshirt and out his special sweatpants that had a zipper all the way up the sides. He was just in his boxers and asked for a towel to put over his lap and leg casts.

I’d seen Ari in his bathing suit without his shirt on plenty of times at the pool. But it was different now that we were alone in the small bathroom. We didn’t talk or make jokes like we normally did as I filled up the bucket with warm water and enough body wash to make the water sudsy like a bubble bath. I dipped the cloth in the water and Ari shut his eyes. I started washing his shoulders, rubbing the soapy washcloth in slow smooth circles, being careful not to be too rough or scratchy with the towel. I watched the pulse point on his neck throb. It seemed at odds with the total stillness of his body and his long steady breaths. I washed the front of his chest and tried not to think about anything but being as gentle and careful as I could with him. I tried not to think about what my lips would feel if I kissed him on all the places the washcloth touched. I knew I shouldn’t thinking about kissing him right then, but I couldn’t help it. A strange tender ache had settled over me, reaching all the way from my chest to the base of my spine. I don’t know why, but tears fell down my face. I felt something close to what I imagined my parents felt when they were worried I’d been seriously hurt in the accident; like I wanted to protect Ari from getting hurt ever again even though I knew that was impossible. I kept washing him and let the tears silently flow, trying hard not to sniffle and cause him to open his eyes. I covered his chin in shaving cream and gently gently slid the razor down his chin and over his upper lip. I loved the shape of his lips and how pink they were next to the white shaving cream.

After I was done washing and shaving him, I patted him down with a fluffy dry towel and imagined that the towel was my arms, holding and hugging him tight, engulfing him in softness and warmth.

I’m glad Ari kept his eyes closed the whole time. Not because I was ashamed of crying, but more because I could drink him in and memorize all the details of his face and body that I wanted to save for when we were separated. He was giving me a gift and didn't even know he was, which made me even sadder in a way, but still grateful.

When I finished up and Ari opened his eyes, I knew he saw that I'd been crying. But he didn't say anything about it or poke fun of me for it, which was another small gift in its way. But he did have a lost and distant look in his eyes, like he was the hurt bird I'd seen in the road the day of the accident. I couldn't cradle or protect him, though, as much as I wanted to. I knew without either of us mentioning it that this was probably the only time he'd let me wash him like this.


	34. Self-Portrait at the End of Summer

Since the accident, my mom had been on a mission to keep me as busy as humanly possible. I think she thought it would keep me from slipping into another low spell if she kept me perpetually occupied. I have to admit her strategy actually kind of worked. I’d go over to Ari’s in the morning then come home and help my dad with the garden. Once a week I’d go to counseling with Oscar. My mom also decided the move was the perfect opportunity to give our house an organizational overhaul, so I helped her decide which things we’d take with us to Chicago, what we could keep for the grad student subletters, what we could give away to Goodwill and what we’d need to put in attic storage. We had shoeboxes full of photos that she’d never had a chance to put into albums so that was a big project we did together. I especially liked looking through the photos from when my parents were in college. I liked seeing their progression from mysterious almost-strangers to the people they are today. In some of them my dad is barely recognizable with his shaggy hair, ill-conceived facial hair and hippy dippy clothes. My mom’s style doesn’t change as much over the years. She’s younger yes, with less gray hair, but the same fierce love and beauty I see in her now shines through in all the photos of her and my dad together. She’s an old soul, my mom.

She also gave me the assignment of planning out our road trip from El Paso to Chicago, so I spent time at the library doing research about where I might want to visit on our pit stops. She signed my Dad and I up for Sunday shifts at the local food bank and made us all take weekly hikes in the desert so I’d stay in shape while my cast was still on and I couldn’t swim. Like I said, she was on a mission.

Despite all this I still had plenty of free afternoons where I didn’t have anything pressing to do and I’d lay in the hammock in our back yard for hours. I’d usually bring a book out with me but ended up looking up at the sky or drifting off or getting lost in daydreaming. I liked it out there in the shade, rocking gently in the breeze. It made me feel suspended in time, like the summer would last forever. But before I knew it four weeks had passed and it was time for my cast to come off and in a week we’d be leaving El Paso. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever call El Paso home again. And if we did come back, I wasn’t sure Ari would still be my friend when we returned. I didn’t like to think about that.

The day I got my cast off, I went swimming. My arm was sore and my muscles were weaker so I took it slow. But being in the water again felt right. Like coming home.

After I got back from the pool I drew a self-portrait and wrote in my journal, luxuriating in holding a pencil confidently again in my right hand. This is what I wrote:

 _This is me, Dante Quintana._  
_This is the me I am today._

 _Do I look like the same person I was_  
_before the hailstorm came?_  
_Before the sirens and the near escape?_

 _I’m the same height and weight._  
_My eyes are still creek brown,_  
_my hair is still inky black._

 _My face is no longer splattered with purple and blue._  
_My bones are healed and sealed._  
_My lips are unsplit pink._

 _Then how come I feel different?_  
_If I’m not the same me the mirror saw six weeks ago,_  
_whose face is looking back?_

 _Who am I trying to recreate with charcoal and paint,_  
_with lines and shades?_  
_What am I trying to erase if not my secrets and shame?_

 _I don’t want to lie but I’m still terrified_  
_of becoming the me I see when I close my eyes and dream._

* * *

  __

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Image link if it does not embed properly](https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfq2oxhz8u0vj58/danteselfportrait.jpeg?dl=0)


	35. Unsent Letter

Dear Ari,

I’m not going to send this letter. It’s for my eyes only. Oscar (my counselor) was the one who encouraged me to write this. He thinks it’ll help me finally move on from the accident and be able to get a fresh start when we leave El Paso. He asked me, “If you could tell Ari anything at all, without worrying about what he might say or how he'd react, what would it be?”

I’d tell you how amazing I think it is that we found each other. It’s crazy to me that I only met you two and half months ago. It seems like I’ve known you forever. Why do you think it is that you can be around some people for years and never really know them and for other people it just takes a few hours and—bam!—you know they get you—that they see you, really see you—and vice versa. Is that what adults call “having chemistry?” Is it somehow related to pheromones? Is there a friend version of that phenomenon, where with some people you get immediate friend sparks—Bunsen burners exploding, gaskets blown!—and with other people it's just dud central? Like, with my cousins. We visit with them on the holidays every year but it’s like a blank slate each time. Tabula rasa of anything interesting we've ever said to each other. We must resort to talking about sports I care nothing about or which distant relatives are popping out babies or how good the food we're all currently masticating is. Blah city. But with you, we could talk for hours about the stupidest things and I’d love every minute of it. I want to know every little thing there is to know about you and I want you to know me, too. I want us to know each other so well that we could fit into all the little secret spaces of each other’s souls.

Yeah, okay, that was corny. And I’d never say that to you out loud. But I guess that’s the whole purpose of this letter. To say the unsayable.

I’d tell you again that I’m sorry about the accident. That you got hurt. And now we’re both changed because of it.

I’d tell you that there’s nothing about you that I don’t like. I like your sullen, introspective moods just as much as your happy ones. I like “debating” with you (okay, arguing) just as much as when we agree on things. I like when you make a deadpan joke and don’t crack a smile until the last possible second, like you’re playing a game of chicken with yourself. I like the way your face settles into concentration when I’m reading to you. Even with your eyes closed, it’s like I can tell what you think about a certain passage just by a quirk of your eyebrows, the tiniest curve of your mouth. I like when your hair is greasy and you’re a little smelly and you haven’t shaved just as much as when you’re fresh and soft and clean. I like looking at your face a lot. That’s not something I can actually tell you, is it? That I like every part of you because they make you who you are, make you the boy I love.

Ok, now I’m verging into Hallmark puke territory again. But sometimes that sort of thing is okay. In small doses. In love letters that will never be sent.

I’d tell you: don’t be afraid of becoming the person you were meant to be. (And then I’d try to take that advice myself).

I’d say I love you right out loud and I’ll miss you like hell when I’m gone.

That wasn’t so wrong or scary to admit, was it? It made me feel good writing it, acknowledging it. The truth feels good to let out of its cage, soaring out into the open sky where it belongs.

Love,  
Dante


	36. Swimming and You

A few days after I got my cast off, Ari got his arm cast off, too. I went over to his house that evening and we sat on his front porch. He stretched out his arm that had been broken and I stretched out mine.

“All better,” I said. “When something gets broken, it can be fixed.” I bent and stretched out my arm again, relishing in the simple freedom of movement. Now that the cast was off, my body was already forgetting what all the itchiness and constriction had felt like, how unbearable it had felt at first. “Good as new.”

“Maybe not good as new,” he said. “But good anyway.”

I thought about that phrase ‘good as new’. Ari was right; our arms would never be exactly the same as they were before we broke them. They’d never be perfectly new. But who says new things are the best things? The standard to be judged against? Most of my favorite things—my mom’s record player, the photos of my parents from college, the books that I’d dog-eared and highlighted and scribbled notes in all over the margins, my threadbare jeans with holey knees that Ari made fun of—were old and well worn. Of course there’s the thrill of getting something sparkly and new like my telescope or the excitement of cracking open an unfilled sketchbook or journal, when the anticipation of creation, the unsullied blankness of the pages, is part of the allure. But things are useless until you take the care to work them in, to make them yours, to create or discover something with them. I guess all relationships have that allure of newness at first, too. The thrill of meeting someone for the first time, seeing if you have that spark of connection, that zing that makes you think, ‘ _This is someone I want to get to know, to reveal myself to’_. But how can you really know someone if the bad stuff—the stuff that scuffs and scrapes you up, that wears down the shine—doesn’t happen too? I think ‘good as old’ is actually more fitting than ‘good as new’ when it comes to the people you love the most.

And with other things, like swimming for example, you’re not very good when you’re new at it. It takes time, practice and patience to build muscle and endurance and to reach the level where moving through the water feels natural, not like you’re competing against it. To get to that level of quietness and focus inside even when your body is pulling against the full weight of water. To feel like you can breathe underwater even though that’s impossible.

“I went swimming today,” I said.

“How was it?”

“I love swimming.”

“I know,” he said.

“I love swimming,” I said again. I knew what else I wanted to say to him right then. I saw the words hovering over my head like a thought bubble in a comic. I took a breath but the words didn’t come out. The pit had dropped out of stomach in a way I imagine a sky-diver feels like right before they make the jump. _Trust the free fall_ , I told myself. _Trust you’ll land safely on the ground_.

“I love swimming— _and you_.”

Ari didn’t say anything.

“Swimming and you, Ari. Those are the things I love the most.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t true. I just said you shouldn’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Dante, I don’t—“

“You don’t have to say anything. I know that we’re different. We’re not the same.”

He nodded his head but refused to meet my eyes. I felt a stinging tightness in my throat and my eyes itched but I needed to ask him the one thing that I’d been the most afraid of.

“Do you hate me?”

I’d gotten the feeling over the last few weeks that Ari resented me coming over and reading to him every day, resented me trying to draw him out of his shell when he really wanted to be left alone. Like being friends with me was too big of a burden and was keeping him from healing, keeping him hurt. If that was true, I didn’t know what I’d do besides leave his front porch and never come back.

“No, I don’t hate you, Dante.”

I released a long breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. We sat in silence for a while. Ari and I were on shaky ground, but not shattered.

“Will we be friends? When I come back from Chicago?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

Relief washed over me. I smiled and he smiled back. I didn’t feel like crying anymore.


	37. Not The End

During the last few days before we left for Chicago, my room was almost as blank and empty as Ari’s. My bed was still there, along with my empty bookshelves and desk and comfy reading chair, but mostly everything else that made the room mine had been boxed up in storage or packed up to take with us. It was kind of weird, but kind of peaceful too. I sort of understood why Ari liked his minimalist (i.e. nonexistent) interior decorating strategy. My head felt clearer those last few days than it had since the accident. A grad student was going to be living in my room next year and I made sure to leave a little note for them warning that birds liked to hang out on the window sill but it wasn’t a big deal – they were completely harmless but sometimes a little noisy.

The day before we left, my parents and I went over to Ari’s for dinner. I know that our parents had all met each other before because of the accident, but this was the first time we were all together purely socially, like one big family. Even though the occasion was sad, I wasn’t sad that night, not really. I liked how well our parents got along. My dad and Ari’s dad hit it off like gangbusters and spent the whole night drinking beer (blech) and talking politics. Our moms cooked together and talked in Spanish.

After dinner, Ari and I hung out on the porch. We weren’t talking much but I was okay with it. It was peaceful, like my blank room. I took mental snapshots of all of us together in my head to remember for forever.

“Your sketch pad is under my bed. Will you get it for me?” Ari said, out of nowhere.

It took me by surprise. I’d almost forgotten about the sketch pad I’d given him in the hospital. I had a flashback to how he looked that day hooked up to his hospital bed, with his double casts and banged up face and cloudy, pain-filled eyes. My stomach clenched at the memory. He was so much better now, I reassured myself. His arm was healed, he had crutches and not a wheelchair, he was going to be fine. But it didn’t make the queasy feeling in my stomach go away.

I almost told him I didn’t want to get the sketch pad. Showing people my artwork still embarrassed me most of the time. But I had given the sketchbook to him as a gift and it would be weird of me to refuse to look at it now with him.

I nodded and went inside to his room to get it. It was right under the bed, like he said it would be. His journal was under the bed, too. When I saw it, my heart slammed into my chest. I picked up his journal, just held it in my hands for a few seconds. It had a soft leather cover, smooth to the touch. Almost without intending to, I opened it up to a random page. My eyes quickly scanned the words:

_I don’t like being fifteen._

_I didn’t like being fourteen._

_I didn’t like being thirteen._

_I didn’t like being twelve._

_I didn’t like being eleven._

_Ten was good. I liked being ten. I don’t know why but I had a very good year when I was in fifth grade._

_The fifth grade was very good. Mrs. Pendragon was a great teacher and for some reason, everyone seemed to like me. A good year. An excellent year. Fifth grade. But now, at fifteen, well, things are a little awkward. My voice is doing funny things and I keep running into things. My mom says my reflexes are trying to keep up with the fact that I’m growing so much._

_I don’t care much for this growing thing._

_My body’s doing things I can’t control and I just don’t like it._

I snapped his journal shut without reading any more and tucked it hastily back under the bed. I felt like a criminal. My heart was still beating so fast. I shouldn’t have just done that. I went to the bathroom and put some cool water on my face. It’s not that I didn’t desperately want to know what was inside Ari’s head. I did more than anything. I wanted to know if he still hated being fifteen and what other changes his body had gone through that he would never ever talk to me about. I wanted to know if he’d truly forgiven me, if he thought we’d be friends when I came back, if there was an inkling of a chance he liked me in the same way as I liked him. If he loved me, too. But it wasn't right, reading his journal without him knowing. I couldn’t betray his confidence like that ever again. His thoughts and trust had to be freely given, like I’d given him my sketchbook.

After my cheeks had cooled down, I went back outside to the porch and handed him my sketchbook. I was ashamed to look him in the eye.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“What?” I asked. My heart was still going wildly fast. I had no idea what he might say. Had he read my journal, too? 

“I haven’t looked at it.”

Oh. I didn’t know what to say. My feelings were a little hurt that he’d never bothered to look at what I’d given him. But considering what I’d just done, I really had no ground to stand on for what constitutes being a good friend or not.

“Can we look at them together?” he said.

I didn't say yes, but I didn't say no, either. I was caught in some sort of silent limbo. He opened the sketchbook. The first drawing was a self-portrait of me reading, which I thought was a bit pretentious in hindsight. The next one was of my dad reading, which was not so bad. Then there was another self-portrait, more close up, just of my face.

“You look sad in this one.”

“Maybe I was sad that day.”

I remembered the day I drew that one. It was right after my parents had told me we’d probably be moving to Chicago.

“Are you sad now?”

Yes. Yes and no. Yes, I was sad to be leaving. But meeting and becoming friends with Ari this summer made me happier than I’d been in the longest time. I didn’t answer his question and we kept flipping through the book. We came to the sketches I’d done of Ari in his room, the same day I’d given him the drawing of his rocking chair. There were five or six sketches of him sitting on his bed, reading. Some close ups of his hands and his eyes. One of him sleeping. My face flushed as Ari traced his fingers over the page. I was a little embarrassed at how seriously he was studying each and every picture. I was glad he couldn’t peer into my head and know what I’d been thinking while I was drawing him. It was too embarrassing. But I was honored and a little humbled, too, to share this part of me with him.

“They’re honest,” Ari said.

“Honest?”

“Honest and true. You’re going to be a great artist someday.”

“Someday,” I said. I thought I might cry, but I didn’t. I cleared my throat and said, “Listen, you don’t have to keep the sketchbook.”

“You gave it to me. It’s mine.”

He looked at me and the tension I’d felt since I snuck a peak in his journal finally subsided. We looked through the remaining sketches and sat on the porch together as night fell and the sky changed from blue to dusty pink to orange. The air smelled like a future rainstorm.

My parents came outside and told us it was time to head out, we had a big day tomorrow. My dad gave Ari a kiss on the cheek and my mom touched his chin in that inscrutable way she has.

I hugged Ari.

He hugged me back.

It was a little awkward with his crutches, but I don’t think either of us cared.

I touched the back of his neck, his hair. It was as soft as I always thought it would be.

“See you in a few months,” I said into his neck.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’ll write,” I said.

I didn’t cry, not then. I didn’t cry until very late that night when I was alone in my empty room listening to the wild rain beat down. In that moment, holding my best friend close to me, feeling our bodies aligned, breathing him in and breathing in the smell of my last summer night in El Paso, I was the happiest boy in the universe. Because I knew I’d be back here again, with Ari. I knew this wasn’t the end of us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, thanks for reading! So sorry for the hiatus!! I do love working on this story and feel bad my updates have been so sporadic. Thanks to everyone who has stuck by it and left such supportive comments!!!


	38. Clio

First day of school, University of Chicago Laboratory School aka Lab aka U-High, 1987. (I couldn’t believe I was going to a school nicknamed _U-High_ and I’d never even gotten close to taking a single puff of marijuana before. I felt like I was failing at basic teenager-ing).

U-High was an expensive fancy private school, but because of its affiliation with the university I got a 50% tuition discount for being a professor’s kid. A lot of the kids going there were professors’ kids too, which I wasn’t all too thrilled about at first. Yes, call me the world’s biggest hypocrite, but going into it I thought everyone would be exactly the same: rich overachievers hyper focused on 4.0 GPAs and perfect SAT scores and winning all the sports trophies and joining a zillion extracurricular activities just to make Ivy League colleges drool. And yeah, there were a lot of kids there exactly like that. But not everyone.

I was in Home Room, waiting for the teacher to take attendance before the first class bell. The room buzzed with excited chatter laced with first day back jitters. Everyone seemed to be best friends already; or at least, it seemed clear that all the little social circles had already been well established years beforehand. I was doodling on the back of my class schedule, trying to look like I didn’t care that I obviously had no friends. Trying not to think of Ari too much.

“Pssst. Hey you. New guy.” Someone sitting behind me flicked my shoulder with a pencil, kind of hard.

I turned around and the boy behind me handed me a folded up piece of paper. He gestured vaguely to the back of the classroom and then went back to the conversation he’d been having with his friends.

Confused and a little nervous, I opened the note.

_Hey Artist Boy, what’s your name? I’m Clio. You can sit back here with me if you want. (Or you can continue be an antisocial tortured artist if that’s your jam). (No pressure)._

I looked in the direction the boy had pointed. A few rows back sat a girl who waved at me with a little smirk. She also appeared to be sitting by herself.

She didn’t look like anyone I’d met in El Paso and I tried not to stare too hard at her. Her face was super pale. Like, on purpose pale done with makeup. She looked like a porcelain doll, but with thick smudgy eyeliner and deep purple lips, almost black. She had a nose ring and an eyebrow ring and a lip ring and wore safety pins through her ears. She had on all black clothing with lots of chunky metallic chain jewelry. Her platinum blond hair was teased out in enormous feathery puffs. She was kind of scary looking, but also intriguing, and beautiful. I smiled back at her and her face lit up. I got up to move seats.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, I’m Dante. I’m new. Just moved from Texas.”

“I could tell.”

“That I’m from Texas? I’m not even wearing cowboy boots.”

She smiled. “No, I could tell you’re new.”

“That obvious?”

“It’s a small school. And most of us have known each other for ages. Some of our parents were even in, like, Lamaze class together back in the 70s.”

“Lamaze?”

“You know…Lamaze. Baby breathing?” When she saw my still totally confused expression, she did a series of rapid firing breaths and exaggerated grimaces like a woman about to go into labor while gripping the edge of her desk and her belly for support. We both laughed. I liked her laugh; it was giggly and twinkly, somewhat at odds with her intense punk look.

“What were you drawing before when I was spying on you?” she asked.

I showed her my doodles, which were really nothing special. Some birds and storm clouds and a desert landscape at night. Her eyes went wide.

She smacked my shoulder (in a friendly way). “Get out, Artist Boy, you’re really good! I was expecting, like, cartoon boobs or penises or something. But this is quality. Want to join Plexus? That’s the Art and Lit Mag. I’m the editor this year."

“Um…”

“Please say yes.”

She fluttered her big doe/raccoon eyelashes at me.

"Um...sure?"

She grabbed my schedule and turned it over to compare it to hers.

“Looks like we have lunch together. Sweet! The Plexus crew always eats lunch in the art room in the C Wing. Go there instead of the cafeteria and I’ll introduce you. And after school we’re prob gonna go to Wax Trax. Have you been there yet?”

“Is that like…a wax museum?”

She shivered like she had the heebie-jeebies.

“Uch, wax museums give me the creeps. They’re the worst. Like, you just know all those wax figures come alive at night when no one’s around and have crazy wax orgies and then have a ton of weird creepy bastard wax babies." She shivered again. "But no. Wax Trax's the best record store in town. We all basically live there. I'm in love with one of the clerks but I don't think it's ever gonna happen, alas. What bands are you into? I like lots, not just punk and deathrock. Though  _Siouxsie and the Banshees_ is my fave right now. _"_

“Um…I like  _The Beatles?”_

Her eyes got big and she laughed, but not meanly. “Ok, I’m definitely adopting you, Artist Boy. You're the most adorable. Consider me your Chicago Cultural Ambassador.”

The teacher finally shushed everyone for announcements and attendance and Clio and I kept passing our note back and forth. (I felt like a major rebel). When the bell rang we collected our things. “Don’t forget. Art room for lunch. Promise?” she said and held out her pinky. I pinky promised with her and she pointed me in the direction of my first class.

And that’s basically how I ended up making friends with U-High’s one and only goth crew on the first day at my new school.


	39. Letter 1

Dear Ari,

Okay, I think I’m falling in love-at-first-sight with Chicago. I know, I know, it’s only been two weeks since we moved...but the noise! the energy! the people! the pizza! (I’m sort of kidding, but not really. Deep dish pizza = a crazy good cheesy gooey mouth orgasm of decadent delight). Chicago’s so different from El Paso. Not better, but different. I wish I could send you a cassette tape of everything I’m hearing right now. There’s the clanking and sometimes ear-splitting screeching of the El train as it snakes along the track overhead; cabs blaring and honking in rush hour traffic; a street drummer going to town on a plastic bucket; snippets of conversation in a jumble of different languages as people pass by on their way home from work. There’s also a group of kids from my new school at a table near mine talking and laughing so loud they could be mistaken for urban hyenas escaped from the zoo. I think they’re doing it so everyone looks at them and wishes they _were_ them and having as much fun as they’re having (or pretending to have). But I’m happy to be sitting by myself for a little while, taking everything in, writing to you. (Oh, I’m sitting at a coffee shop that has some outdoor tables that’s pretty close to my new school. I’m not friends with the loud obnoxious laughers, but I have made some new friends. Mostly goths and New Wavers. But I’ll tell you about that later).

Here’s another thing I like about downtown Chicago: the buildings! They’re so much taller here than in El Paso’s squat valley. It’s weird not having open sky though. But I love all the elegant old art deco buildings and how their fancy, intricate geometry pushes right up against grimy bodegas and newsstands and five-and-dimes and all night diners. I like the shine as well as the dirt and the grime. I even like the sort of rank, oily smell of the river. Is that weird?

I like people watching, especially on the El. If I’m brave enough I want to bring my sketchbook and secretly draw people. Not in a creepy way! Just so I can try to capture the kaleidoscope variety of people and faces and nationalities here. There are people from all over! It makes me feel like I can disappear, but in a good way. Like no one will bat an eye that I’m me, Dante, the odd duck Mexican teenager who’s bad at being Mexican. I can be anyone and no one. It’s sort of freeing.

I wrote this poem just now, it’s in a sort of new style I’m trying out:

_traffic beats & city streets_

_feet & heels click slick cement _

_look up! the El is grinding, winding_

_eyes staring sirens blaring people wearing_

_their skin like it’s what they’re most comfortable in_

_Mexican sparrows Spanish staccatos_

_African rainbows Indian spices_

_black & brown & beige & pink & white _

_tight jeans taught muscles arms chests legs thighs_

_guys banging can drums bouncing hand balls_

_afros punks street soldiers skinheads skate boarders_

_bruised knees scrapes shouts break dancers_

_break it all down_

_Chicago’s own_

_welcome me to my new town_  

It’s okay if you don’t like the poem. It’s probably not very good. It’s just hard to describe how I feel being here, being surrounded by all this newness, all these different types of people, and being myself but not myself because I’m sort of anonymous, like I’m wearing a disguise or something, just observing, taking it all in.

Anyway, I’m babbling.

How was your first day of school? Were you nervous, scared, excited, bored? Did everyone ask about your crutches?

I made some friends the first day. I wasn’t expecting that. A girl named Clio sort of took me under her wing and introduced me to all her artsy friends. She dresses all in goth style (black clothes, black lipstick, crazy spiked up hair) and is really into Mary Shelley and a bunch of bands I've never heard of with names like Alien Sex Fiend and Christian Death. She writes amazing but super dark poetry and smokes clove cigarettes, which smelled surprisingly good. Have you ever smoked a clove cigarette? I kind of wanted to try it but chickened out. She and her group invited me out tonight to this place called Medusa’s that puts on all ages punk/rock/hardcore shows. I’ve never been to a club like that so I’m sort of curious but a little intimidated. I told them my parents had me on strict curfew (which isn't totally true) because I don't think I'm ready yet to dive into their whole scene. I think I'll go the next time I'm invited out though. (Side note: at first when Clio asked me, she told me everyone would meet up first at the “D’n’D”, which is her shorthand for Dunkin’ Donuts. At first I thought she meant Dungeons and Dragons, which led to me admitting to her that I used to play religiously every Friday night in middle school. But she thought it was cool, not weird or dorky. They're the least judgmental group I think I've ever met). Clio is cool. She’s sarcastic and puts on a tough front but she’s also sweet. (Does that remind you of anyone else we know??? Hmm?). I think you’d like her.

Are you doing anything fun this weekend?

I’ll write back again soon if I have anything new and interesting to report.

Your friend,

Dante


	40. The Crap Cave

“Dante! You found us!” Clio said as I hovered awkwardly in the doorway of the art room that first day of school during lunch period.

She bounded over and grabbed my elbow to draw me into the oddly dark classroom. The overhead lights were all off, the window shades partially drawn down and gloomy pop music I vaguely recognized as The Cure droned from a cassette player. About ten kids were sprawled out around the room, most of them sporting various degrees of punk/goth/New Waver style. Two corset-clad girls in billowy skirts drew intricate designs on each other’s arms in black pen; a couple dressed in “normal” clothes was making out with gusto in the corner by the potter wheels; a boy wearing all black continually skimmed his pointer finger over the top of a Bic lighter flame; and the rest were eating lunch, chatting, scribbling in notepads or singing along to the music. Clio flicked the overhead lights a few times to get everyone’s attention, eliciting a few winces and hisses and boos from the group.

“Everyone, listen up, this is Dante. He’s new. He’s from Texas, but try not to hold that against him. He’s a brilliant artist. Dante, this is everyone. That’s Raija, Jane, Sachi, Fletch and Kelly back there sucking face, Joseph, Ann, Dave, Forest and Vee.”

I was greeted with a few head nods and finger waves, except for the couple making out who kept at it with sloppy yet admirable enthusiasm. Everyone went back to their conversations as Clio led me closer to the girls she’d pointed out as being named Jane and Sachi.

“So, Dante from Texas, welcome to _'The Crap Cave’,"_ Clio said using air quotes. “We have lit mag meetings here and also make our own ‘zines and stuff. Raija’s mom Ms. B is the art teacher—she just stepped out for a minute—so she doesn’t care if we hang out here as long as we don’t you know, perform ritual animal sacrifices or set anything on fire. _Again_.” She coughed pointedly in the direction of the boy with the lighter seated a few desks down from us and the girls chuckled. Seeing my apparent confusion she said, “See, Joseph’s a bit of a pyro and went through a destruction of property phase last year, didn’t you, Jo-Jo?” The boy in question grinned slyly up at us. “But he’s got it under control now,” Clio continued. “He channels his urges into sculptures where he can use an actual blowtorch from woodshop.”

“Blowtorches rule,” he said and cast me one more glance before focusing all his attention back to his lighter and intrepid pointer finger. I couldn’t help but notice that all his fingernails were painted black and he was wearing eyeliner and dark lipstick like the girls.

I pulled my gaze away from him, not wanting to stare too hard and be rude. “What did you call this room? The ‘crap cave’?” I asked Clio. “Did I hear that right?”

“Oh yeah, you heard me right.”

“Do I even want to know?”

Clio laughed. “Don’t look so scared, we know how to use the bathrooms like everyone else. It’s a sort of long story. You ever hear of The Batcave?”

“You mean like from Bat Man comics?”

“No. Well yes, but no. Same but different. The Batcave is this famous club in London for people like us. Bauhaus, Robert Smith, Siouxie, Nick Cave, Specimen all hang out and play there. Jane actually got to go there this summer, that lucky bitch,” Clio knocked Jane’s shoulder with friendly admiration. “So we kind of started calling it that in _homage_ to the club like a year ago. But then the school had this gross mouse problem and their little poops were, like, this constant presence in our lives, so somewhere along the line we started calling it ‘The Crap Cave’ instead. Because that's how we roll.”

“The mice were perfect and adorable, not gross,” Sachi said.

“Sachi, no. Just no. The mice themselves might have been cute but their poops definitely weren’t.”

The two girls bantered about whether the mice should have been saved and kept as pets or if they were indeed an icky health hazard while I took everyone in, trying not to gawk, and sat down to eat my packed lunch. I was fascinated by the group’s collective style: a motley assortment of teased and spiked dyed hair, leather jackets, ripped band t-shirts, corsets and lace, fishnets, heavy boots, winged eyeliner, black lipstick and nail polish, powdered white faces, spiky hardware chain jewelry mixed with rosaries, crosses and pentagram necklaces. Some of the boys were even wearing makeup, which was something you hardly ever saw in El Paso. Joseph, the pyro boy, was particularly fascinating to me. His raven hair was teased out as much as Clio’s and his dramatic eye makeup accentuated his blue eyes and delicate, almost pretty features. The flame from his Bic lighter cast a warm glow on his ghostly pale skin.

Clio must have caught me staring because she leaned in close to my ear and said, “Don’t worry, Dante, we might look at little scary but we don’t bite. At least most of us don’t. Forest over there is saving up to get his teeth filed, but it’s not for blood sucking purposes. It’s because it’ll look badass.”

“Wow. My old school in El Paso was a Catholic private school so we all had to wear uniforms. It’s so cool you can wear whatever you want here. And be whoever you want. Do you all make your own clothes? I love your corsets,” I said to Jane and Sachi.

The girls grinned at me with approval and Clio said, “I knew you were a good egg, Dante. Jane made the corsets. She’s an amazing designer and sewer. I think the rest of us get by with thrift stores, hot glue and a crapload of paperclips.”

“I’ve never really thought about my clothes before,” I said. “But now I feel so boring compared to you all.”

“Aw, there’s nothing wrong with being a normie,” Clio said and patted me on the back. “It doesn’t make you boring.”

“Well, if you want to try something new, let me know,” Jane said. “Jo-Jo’s my twin brother. I make stuff for him all the time. Cravats, vests, things like that. I’m sure he’d let you borrow something.”

“Wow, thanks. You think I’d look good?”

“Yeah, for sure. But don’t let us pressure you. We dress like this because it feels right, right? But it’s not for everyone.”

The girls nodded.

“How did you all know you wanted to get into goth stuff?” I asked.

Jane said, “Well, for me, growing up I loved making clothes and dressing up since forever. Halloween was my always my favorite holiday. I was obsessed, like _obsessed_. Like I’d start planning my costume and how to decorate the house six months in advance. And after it was over each year, the next day I’d get so sad and cry for days and beg my mom to keep the decorations up and let me keep wearing a cape or whatever to school every day. So when I figured out that I could dress however I wanted _whenever_ I wanted and basically have Halloween all year round and have my clothes express how I feel inside all the time, it was like a big weight was lifted.”

“Do people make fun of you?”

“I mean, sure, dicks are dicks,” Jane said.

“We get all sorts of ignorant comments at school, on the street, wherever. Like… _‘Hey Morticia, Halloween is over,’_ ” Clio lowered her voice to a dopey male grumble.

“Or _‘Errr….Do you sleep in a coffin?_ ’” Jane said.

“Or _‘You look pretty hot for a dead girl!’_ ” Sachi said.

“Or my personal favorite, the classic ‘ _Going to a funeral?’”_ Clio said with an epic eyeroll. “Yeah, _your_ funeral if you don’t shut up about it. _Please_. But there are lots of people who aren’t asshats and you can just ignore the losers.”

“Yeah,” Sachi said. “People say things like _‘Oh, you’d look so pretty if you didn’t dress like that’_ but this is how I feel pretty and beautiful. I didn’t feel right before. Now I feel good. Right. Like myself.”

“Raija’s mom is super cool because she’s an old hippie and gets it,” Clio said. “But my mom is still waiting and praying for the day when I let her dress me all in pink pouffy dresses again. Sorry Anita, not gonna happen.” There was an edge to Clio’s voice when she talked about her mom that I hadn’t heard from her yet. It made me wonder what her home life was like.

Sachi said, “Yeah, my parents were all worried at first that I was depressed and wanting to kill myself. They tried to have an intervention with all my aunties and cousins. _‘We’re worried about you, Sachi.’_ ‘ _This isn’t the real you._ ’ Um, first off, yes it is. And second off, I’m so much happier now than before when I felt like a fake.”

“Yeah, people think that we do this for attention or as a cry for help or because we’re suicidal or worship Satan or are in a cult, but that’s not true at all,” Jane said. “I started making clothes for myself when I was ten. This isn’t a ‘phase’. I’m not going to just grow out of it.”

“And finding people who are into the same bands and fashion and movies and everything makes putting up with all the weird looks and comments easier. We’re here for each other, ” Sachi said.

“And sure, we _get_ attention,” Clio said, “because we stand out with our awesome amazingness. But it’s not like we do it _for_ attention.”

“Yeah, I totally get it.” I said. “I think it’s great.”

The girls smiled at me and I wondered how it would feel to dress like them, if that would feel ‘right’ for me or not. I understood what Sachi had said about feeling like a fake, though, and not liking how that made me feel. I felt that way when I used to tell people my name was Dan and not Dante. I felt that way still, a little. Because I didn’t quite know what it meant to be totally free and open with myself and the world and the universe. Not when it came to the biggest secret I had. In El Paso, I felt like I already stood out by not looking Mexican enough, by liking art and poetry and books and astronomy too much. It was enough to blend in and not get teased or bullied for being a little strange. Now I wondered if I flipped the script and really tried to stand out—if I dressed all in black and put on makeup and spiked my hair and embraced my innate weirdness—if that would make me feel more like me. It might make me feel tough and cool and badass for a little while, but I doubted it would make me feel more like myself the way it did for this group. How did I know, though? I’d never tried it before.

I wondered what Ari would think of my new friends. I bet he’d like them. And then I wondered what Ari would look like in black nail polish and eyeliner. I bet he’d look like a dark glamorous rock star. The thought did funny things to my insides.

Then the art teacher, Ms. Baldwin a.k.a. Raija’s mom, came in. She had gray hair in a long braid all the way down her back and wore a long flowy dress and bangle bracelets. She turned the overhead lights on and said, “Hey darklings, the cruel daylight beckons. Gotta get ready for the next class. Lunch is over in five. And you two, _yoo-hoo_ , Earth to Fletch and Kelly! Please rein in your raging hormones during lunch if at all humanly possible? I can’t have anyone getting pregnant on school grounds.” Everyone cracked up at that and Fletch and Kelly turned beet red but finally disentangled their entwined limbs (and tongues).

I had an art class with Ms. Baldwin later in the day so I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Dante Quintana, I’m in your painting class during sixth period.”

“Dante, it’s so nice to meet you. You’re new, yes? This lot showing you the ropes?”

“Yes, Clio invited me to eat lunch with her and be part of lit mag.”

“That would be lovely. I’m the advisor, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of you. How are you finding Chicago? Settling in all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am! Please, call me Ms. B. Where are you from?”

“El Paso.”

“Ah. I’ve only been there once. EPMA is a lovely museum. Have you been to the Art Institute yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“We’ll be doing a field trip later in the year, but if you are a lover of art you must go. It’s one of the prides of Chicago.”

“Thanks, Ms. B, I will.”

"Now if you’ll excuse me, Dante, I have to prep for next period. See you in a few hours!”

Ms. B went over to her daughter Raija, who had been sitting off to herself drawing in a sketchpad for most of lunch, and gave her a quick side hug before disappearing into a supply closet. Since everyone else was getting packed up I ate the rest of my lunch quickly and consulted my schedule to see where I was headed next.

“You’re in sixth period drawing?” I looked up and saw it was Joseph who had asked me the question. Standing up instead of hunched over the desk I saw how truly long and lanky he was. He was about a foot taller than me.

I nodded up at him and tried to smile but had a hard time keeping eye contact.

“Cool. Me too.”

He flicked his lighter a few times in his right hand and then grinned a lopsided grin at me before heading out into the hallway right as the bell rang.

This was shaping up to be a much different first day of school than I had expected.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'll be posting each chapter over on tumblr as well](https://dantediscoversfic.tumblr.com/)


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